How the story started

A 2009 article in Fast Company discussed Proctor and Gamble’s ambition to make Old Spice the most popular brand of men’s antiperspirant and bodywash products. Old Spice already had a YouTube channel where it posted TV ads to modest viewer numbers.

In February 2010 two short videos appeared on the Old Spice channel. These were different from previous ads — they featured Isaiah Mustafa, a handsome black actor with an attractive bass voice and an air of insouciant machismo. Suddenly Proctor and Gamble were targeting a female audience, presumably on the assumption that women buy the family’s showering products.

First came the “Did you know…?” advertisement.

The breakthrough — blogs and emails

Then the breakthrough hit — a series of quick scene and costume changes, a verbal rhythm (look over there, now back at me) and a silly punchline (“I’m on a horse.”) Since it was posted in February this advertisement has had more than 14 million views.

This one was called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” After winning the 2010 Grand Prix for film (advertising) at Cannes, it was reposted on blogs and other web sites worldwide, the link shared via emails between friends.

The advertisement was launched in early February, the week after the Superbowl football match; this is a time of year when new advertising campaigns are launched (in the USA), analysed, critiqued and reported upon. Campaign Brief magazine claimed Old Spice had become the best-selling product in its category (in the USA).

A similar ad appeared on YouTube on 29 June and again was picked up by bloggers and social media users.

Going all the way — individual attention

That’s when things really got hot. Mainstream media personalities started mentioning the ads, in their regular gigs and via social media like Twitter. Popular online news outlets like the Huffington Post picked up the story. And two weeks later, on 12 July, Old Spice Guy started talking back directly to his fans.

The advertising agency’s creative director, Iain Tait, took a strategic approach to deciding when, how — and to whom — the video responses would be created:

“One of the unique things taking place in the studio is we have a team of social media people, we have the Old Spice community manager, we have a social media strategist, a couple of technical people, and a producer. And we’ve built an application that scans the Internet looking for mentions and allows us to look at the influence of those people and also what they’ve said. They’re working in collaboration with the creative team that are there to pick out the messages that: 1. Have creative opportunity to produce amazing content; or 2. Have the ability to then embed themselves in an interesting or virally-relevant community.”

The team chose its targets well, even winning broad approval from the notoriously hard-to-please 4Chan online community.

On 13 July a team of video production specialists and a group of social media experts wrote, filmed, edited and published 87 personalised responses to commenters at Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Digg and other social web sites.

Old Spice Guy even delivered a marriage proposal (which was accepted).

During that week creative director Iain Tait commented:

“One thing you can sense if you’re lucky enough to be there in the studio is that they’re all having such fun doing this thing. Isaiah is loving it. Everyone who is writing it is loving it. The social media guys are loving it. And that really shines through…

“It’s a really strange thing, but that sense that people are having fun actually manages to transmit itself through the Internet. People gravitate toward things that feel like they’re being done by people who love it. That sense that everyone involved with this is loving it is a huge factor in why this is so successful.”

The end, and the aftermath

In total they shot over 150 videos in three days that week. By 15 July a visibly exhausted Old Spice Guy had hung up his towel and retired.

It’s probably just as well he did retire — after all, who wants to live in a world without bottlenose dolphins?

There have been several spoofs, video responses and imitators, of varying degrees of cleverness and sophistication.

My favorite thus far is the version produced by the Harold B Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Utah, USA. Starring the “New Spice Guy,” it’s called Study like a scholar, scholar (found via Elizabeth Bear).

Of course, in the online world very little is actually original. Old Spice Guy had already said a few words about libraries.

Keep an eye out for Isaiah Mustafa: he’s an actor who knows he’s onto a good thing. He’s also a Batman fan who named his daughter for a character in the Spiderman comics and who is devoted to his girlfriend.

What it all meant

Two lessons.

First, this particular advertising campaign was part of a broader, long-term marketing strategy for Old Spice (see the Fast Company article mentioned above). Proctor and Gamble have spent most of this decade looking for ways to improve Old Spice sales.

The longer-term campaign was already having some effect — Forbes magazine reported that a Chicago market research firm had found Old Spice body wash sales were up 16.7 per cent in the year ending 13 June 2010. It remains to be seen whether the July 2010 hype makes a difference to their overall sales figures.

Second, don’t be fooled by the ‘social media’ element. This was no Cluetrain Manifesto “markets are conversations” concept put into action. Rather, it was an old-fashioned broadcast advertising campaign. Proctor and Gamble had a product to sell, and their advertising agency set about creating a market demand for that product. Interaction between individual customers (or potential customers) and the manufacturer was non-existent.

Individuals did interact with the advertising agency, but it was within strictly defined terms: the individuals blogged, tweeted or otherwise wrote about the advertisements. These blogs, tweets etc were published to the world at large. The ad agency selected a tiny proportion of these messages for a personalised response. The consumers had no input about product design, contents or production; the company learned nothing about the factors that influence a person’s choice of bodywash.

xkcd comic by Randall Monroe - mouseover to see the 'bonus' punchline; click to see the original.

PhD students and librarians, please note.

The aim was to show how well-known IA techniques can be applied to a different type of project, in this case a strategy development project.

There had been some discussion in earlier sessions about how to get started in an information architecture career, and about developing a strategic approach to doing IA work. My presentation, towards end of the second day, seemed an apt time to suggest that a solid set of IA skills can take you in new career directions.

Many thanks to Roger Hudson for the generous loan of his computer.

Earlybird registrations are open now, and close next Tuesday 9 September.

Earlybird registrations are A$660, or A$550 if you quote the discount code MR0243. Register online at the conference web site.

The conference will be held in Sydney, on the weekend of 20-21 September.

Who should attend?

• Designers of navigation, organisation, labelling and search systems that help people find and manage information more successfully,
• Librarians, webmasters, and content owners responsible for creating taxonomies and information architectures,
• Application developers who design web and software solutions and select the technologies and staff to support them,
• Project and business managers needing to understand the benefits and challenges of information architectures in electronic information spaces.

[cross-posted at SneedleflipsockTheBlog]

At the start of 2008 Company X  engaged a new supplier for its office stationery and other sundries. The previous supplier’s contract was not renewed.

Announcements about the new supply arrangements were published in:

• the weekly email newsletter sent to all 6000 staff (18 January, 7 March and 23 May)
• an email from the procurement manager to everyone who had dealt with the previous supplier (10 March)
• a formal memo to all heads of department (11 July), signed by the Deputy Director of Company Administration
• another formal memo (25 August), signed by the Director of Company Administration and sent to the same distribution list as the 11 July memo

Each of these messages was clear, concise, firm, easy to understand. Anyone involved in purchasing stationery would have had to work hard to avoid hearing about the new supply arrangements.

As well, the previous suppliers were asked to cease soliciting business from individual Company X departments.

Over to you

It is now 1 October. The September accounts show that some Company X departments are still purchasing supplies from the old vendor. The author of the 25 August memo, the senior director responsible for day-to-day operations of the company, is not happy.

Today you have an opportunity to advise that senior director about what to do next.

What kind of problem do you think this is? How might it be solved?

What will you say to the senior director?

To discuss this hypothetical, click the “comments” link below and start typing!

This September I will be presenting a short (30 minute) session at Oz-IA, a case study based on the Information Futures Commission.

Session title: “Developing a business-led information strategy”

In it, we’ll run briskly through a strategy development process that:

1. takes an holistic approach covering several information ‘domains’
2. is founded on business needs and priorities (enterprise architecture)
3. is informed by external trends, developments (business intelligence)
4. and balances organisational needs with individuals’ requirements and perspectives (user research)

Because the Oz-IA audience is mainly people who work on web sites and applications, I’ll focus on how we used several standard user-experience research methods in the strategy development process.

If you have any questions you’d like me to address in this session, leave a comment below or send me an email.

For interaction designers and information architects, some of the interest is in the design process itself — see Jesse James Garrett’s comments on the Aurora web page about the weekly ‘open design’ sessions that led to creation of the Aurora concept.

For the rest of us, part of the interest is in how much this project looks like an early prototype of the cool stuff Tom Cruise did with the police computer in Minority Report ;-)

As the boss, Linda, noted last week, “The first stage of the consultation process has been focused on opening up the issues, exposing the complexity of the environment and the opportunities and challenges before us. In this way we hope to elicit a wide range of views and opinions and ensure that we have explored all the significant issues.”

We started by publishing a Consultation Paper that defined the questions we needed to address.

During March and April we have sought ideas and input from the University community and from external stakeholders. We have held forums with guest speakers, attended meetings, consulted widely, run an online survey, given presentations and invited written submissions.

This exploratory phase will conclude with a series of workshops in late April.

We have reached the widest part of the diamond shape in the diagram — it represents the half-way point for the process. Now we are entering a stage where we begin to refine our ideas based on what we have learned and the feedback received.

In early May we will hold a series of focus groups and other meetings to review all the input received and start drafting the 10-year strategy.

A draft document will be released for comment by the University community in early June.

Once finalised, the strategy will be submitted to an approval process that includes the Commission’s Steering Committee, Academic Board and University Council. An implementation plan will be submitted to the Planning and Budget Committee’s mid-year conference.