Proctor & Gamble (P&G) came to the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan about their recently successful Old Spice guy campaign. These thoughts were gleaned from that presentation.
The success of the Old Spice Guy campaign was no fluke. P&G carefully crafted the campaign to reach a specific market segment with an engaging message. The knew who their competitors were, as well as why people bought those products and their own. They also knew what attributes made their product stand out. Once they identified the segment that they wanted to reach, they chose the attributes of their product that were important to those people and reached out in a way that successfully engaged their target audience.
Who & What
P & G identified several possible segments but decided to go after men who aren’t caught up in their morning routine but who always like to look their best. P&G found that most of these men were just using the soap products that their wives/significant others bought for themselves. Obviously most of these products had a feminine smell because women tend to like scented soap. So there was an issue for these men of wanting to look their best, but worrying about smelling non-masculine.
Dove had also entered the men’s soap market, but their soaps typically had very little smell because they compete on the idea of purity (which tends towards feminine anyway). Old Spice has had a tradition of scent. Many men who currently used their products did so because their fathers had used Old Spice and they were drawn to the memories the scent brought out. Smell was clearly an important differentiator.
Not surprising to most women, men don’t buy their personal care products. Women do because they are the ones who go grocery shopping. Any campaign would have to reach these women and make them want to buy the product for their men.
How
Old Spice had an Old Man’s image. Most of the current consumers were older and used the product because their fathers did. Younger men were not interested in this stodgy image. In order to break into a younger consumer group, Old Spice had to break out and do something new. Humor, edginess and uniqueness are important to these men, so any campaign would have to embrace these concepts.
Old Spice also had to speak to women who bought these products for their men. They had to want to buy the products and the reasons had to appeal to them as well.
Where
Touchpoints for the campaign would be most effective when they reached men and women when they were together. TV Shows which men and women typically watched together were used as a launching point. Separate messages and campaigns were used for channels where only men or only women were reached.
P&G also used Twitter to produce a series of 16 YouTube videos where the Old Spice Guy responded specifically to influencers (if you haven’t seen these, seek them out, they’re clever and hilarious).
What
Obviously P&G used a hip and funny message with a good looking man who speaks both to men and women but highlights the scent attribute.
Results
P&G planned for a 3-5% growth for Old Spice body wash but actually experienced 38% growth – so much so that they’re not able to keep up with demand and their products are “on allocation” because they can not produce them fast enough. Their brand channel is #1 on YouTube and the #2 most subscribed to. They also saw close to 3000% growth of their audience on Twitter and close to 300% growth in traffic on oldspice.com. There was also a measurable lift in social media and P&G increased sales in the first month.
Most telling to the P&G representatives was when the campaign was parodied by Sesame Street:
How can you design marketing success for your company?