Thursday, July 15, 2010

BitchBuzz: Old Spice

[yes, I am up this early -- again]

Doing Online the Right Way: Old Spice

By K.A. Laity
We're so accustomed to ill-conceived ad campaigns that make us wince, it's a genuine pleasure to find one that not only proves successful, but give plenty of laughs as well.

I'm sure many of you remember the Old Spice commercials featuring the hunky Isaiah Mustafa. The initial commercial caused as much controversy as delight, striking many viewers as a little too over the top, and subsequent adverts employed more subtle attempts to pitch Mustafa's glistening torso as both appealing to women and more gently raising the bar for the men.
Old Spice has its own YouTube channel, but more importantly, it's got its own Twitter feed as well. In recent days their inventive use of the two social media streams has exploded across the net.

Old Spice's tweets vary from encouragement to those who fail to live up to the ideal ("Mr. @caseyayers, do not get discouraged. You're swan dive will come with time.") and friendly banter ("Hello @Rushton2. Your tweet reminded me of the summer I spent off the stormy coast of Tibet."), but by far the most effective tweets have been those that led to videos made for other tweeters
("Are you a baby with muscle-structure of a man @MrBabyMan?")...

Read more: http://tech.bitchbuzz.com/doing-online-the-right-way-old-spice.html#ixzz0tkJjYKG6 and see all the videos I've linked to, including (sob!) his farewell. Silver fish hand catch!

I'm off to Necon this afternoon; it's the 30th anniversary year, so not sure who might show up. Looking forward to seeing a few friends I only see there. And as usual, I'm using the trip to stop by and see folks in Connecticut: lunching with the fabulous QoE and stopping by the Steier homestead. Don't know if there's wifi. If there is, doubtless I'll use it. If not, see you Monday.

4 comments:

The Queen said...

HA! I love those ads - they had some pretty silly ones with Bruce Campbell, too. See you this weekend!

C. Margery Kempe said...

Looking forward to it!

Todd Mason said...

Rather a pity that Old Spice is such a bad product. Axe, ont he other hand, much like Hai Karate back in the day, is of a piece with its ad capaigns.

C. Margery Kempe said...

Yeah, can't stand the smell of Old Spice -- and I HATE HATE HATE the Axe ads.