Old Spice It Up, Man

Look at this ad, back to me, now back to this blog. This is one of a series of the more recent Old Spice advertisements that have been airing since February that have been receiving a lot of attention recently--over 5.3 million views on YouTube alone.
Old Spice has been working hard on rebranding itself with the new message of "Smell like a man, man". Targeting a young adult to middle age demographic, they have taken an appealing but mature approach to marketing their product. When your product is named Old Spice, it's difficult to position your product in a way that doesn't seem...well...grandfatherly to your target audiences. If your product position is not appealing enough, throwing star power into the advertising is not a solution to the problem. Some past lukewarm attempts have used stars such as Neil Patrick Harris or Bruce Campbell. For both ads the problem was that the key benefit claim was a weak one. With Harris' ad spot the proposition it boiled down to a purely rational benefit and with Bruce...I didn't get it nor did I want to get it--the key benefit, I mean. But manliness...that is something every man wants. Except the men who want to be women, but they're not the target demographic and I digress. Manliness is a ageless benefit. Even your grandfather or great-grandfather was manly. They were sailors, coal miners, or farmers; they had to walk 20 miles to school through chest high mounds of snow. Uphill going both ways. With 50lbs of books. Take note of the fact that the advertisement addresses both men and women; buyer behavior shows that in households women tend to be major purchasers of bath and grooming products.

Why else did they take this  new approach to marketing Old Spice? Well let's do a quick analysis of the product. Old Spice sells "deodorant, antiperspirant, and other man fresheners". It's a low involvement product--meaning that there isn't much of a cost in trying it out. And it is transformational--meaning that the motivation for using is it positively ended; you use it to make yourself feel good. Their line of products are the kind that are used and bought on a routine basis. As humans, especially males, are creatures of habit, it lends to the fact that purchasers of this product are brand loyals (they always buy it) or routinized favorable brand switchers (they almost always buy it). The key benefit of a manly scent in the ad works to inducing social approval. In addition, the benefit is uniquely positioned, Old Spice is manly while a competitor like Axe is...hormonal and pheromonal (lust and attraction). Lastly, the ad is engaging, the presenter is charismatic and he somehow goes from the shower to a boat to a horse. The ad is a smiling over-the-top parody of all the stereotypical settings for a men's care product commercial.

Just for fun, here is a link to the interview explaining how the ad with Isaiah Mustafa (the new icon of the...er...new Old Spice campaign) was filmed in just one continuous shot.