October 2011 Chatter
When I was a kid, Old Spice After Shave was about even with ugly neckties as the default setting on Father’s Day gifts. Yes, I gave my dad Old Spice and, considering the blue collar job he had in those days, my guess is that he hardly (if ever) used it, much like an ugly necktie. Shulton used to advertise it with a sea captain and a jingle. My perception of the brand has the Old Spice sea captain on life support, in a hospital bed between Speedy Alka-Seltzer and the Maytag repairman.
Last year’s “I’m the man your man could smell like” campaign, featuring Isaiah Mustafa, was smartly written, visually inventive, and virally popular. Although I loved the ads they apparently didn’t sell the product, or the right product anyway (click here). Category sales increased as a whole, with some competitors enjoying a higher share. This may indicate that the creative was so good it overpowered the brand.
This was followed by a campaign starring Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, and positioned the deodorant as “The best smell in the NFL.” If I ever want to smell like a linebacker, I’ll try a few of hours of yard work instead.
Now the Captain is back from his watery grave. The non-Captain, really, because the character proclaims that he is not the decorated Captain of a “mighty ship” who battles sea monsters, he just smells like he is. Does anyone really want to smell like sea captain with a squid on his back (or whatever the hell that thing is)?
Okay, the folks at P&G are trying to appeal to a younger generation (than my father’s?). But couldn’t they just as easily have created a new brand to address younger tastes, instead of trying CPR on an old one? I’m waiting to see if this sells any better than its predecessors.
BOB MATTSON IS THE CO-FOUNDING PARTNER, EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR AND SENIOR COPYWRITER AT SMM ADVERTISING.
Although its overall effectiveness at generating sales is a topic for debate (click here), there is little doubt that Old Spice’s (via Wieden + Kennedy) “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign has succeeded in finding and capturing the attention of an audience at an unprecedented rate, particularly on YouTube, where its various components have been watched nearly 100,000,000 times—roughly the amount of Americans who watch the Super Bowl each year.
The result is that formerly geriatric Old Spice is a reinvigorated brand, having nimbly fended off potential death blows by hipster hot brands like Axe, Tag, and the like, particularly among the all-important 16-25 year old target market. Remarkably, a brand that seemed about as ill-primed for a triumphant second act as Aqua Velva or Brylcreem has regained its “Swagger–” and then some, by completely divorcing itself (as if it never existed at all) from its entrenched market perception as “old person deodorant” to a brand that consistently creates destination viewing content for the trend-making CollegeHumor.com clique.
The latest :30 in the series, “Sea Captain,” is a calculated off-speed pitch to the Isaiah Mustafa fastballs Old Spice has been firing for the past two years, and it works. It’s goofy and pointless, ironically poking a little fun at the success of the campaign it has become a part of. Forget the “sell” copy—there isn’t any. What I love is that in thirty seconds, the surrogate “captain” punches the googly-eyed rubber squid on his shoulder approximately fifty times in thirty seconds; I love that his uniform becomes inexplicably torn to reveal a toned, but anatomically bizarre, “12-pack”; I love that the room is filling with gold coins for no reason; and most of all I love that, although I’ve committed every detail of this spot to memory, I can’t think of a single commercial from Ban, Sure, Degree, Arid, Right Guard, Mennen, etc., that has aired in the past two years that makes me want to watch it twice.
DAVE ROGAN IS A CREATIVE DIRECTOR AT SMM AND HAS SMELLED LIKE A SEA CAPTAIN FOR YEARS—BUT IS PH BALANCED FOR A WOMAN.
This product was originally introduced in 1937 as a woman’s fragrance called Early American Old Spice. The male shaving products didn’t arrive until a year later, simply as Old Spice. For decades the iconic, buoy-shaped bottle carried the images of historic tall ships, but in 1992 P&G opted to go for the current (and less macho) racing yacht.
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