Old Spice · Real-Time Social Response & The Man Your Man Could Smell Like

Old Spice is a men's personal care brand owned by Procter & Gamble. By the late 2000s, the brand had a significant awareness problem: it was perceived as old-fashioned and associated primarily with older men, despite being Procter & Gamble's largest men's grooming brand. Younger male consumers did not identify with the brand, and the brand was losing market share to competitors like Axe (Lynx) which had effectively positioned around a younger, edgier identity.

Procter & Gamble and Wieden+Kennedy developed a campaign strategy built on a specific cultural insight: women make or influence a significant proportion of men's personal care purchasing decisions (buying products for partners, households, and as gifts). Targeting women's interest in men's grooming, while making the content entertaining enough for men to engage with, was the strategic brief that produced the campaign.

"The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" commercial, directed by Tom Kuntz through Wieden+Kennedy, premiered during Super Bowl XLIV on February 7, 2010. The 30-second spot featured Isaiah Mustafa speaking directly to camera ("Hello, ladies") in a seamless series of surreal locations that shifted rapidly without cuts — on a boat, in a shower, on horseback. The writing combined absurdist humour with direct address to the female audience in a way that was distinctive, entertaining, and intentionally ridiculous.

The campaign was strategically targeted at women — the insight being that women make a significant proportion of body wash purchasing decisions and would respond to content about what it would be like to have a man who smelled like Old Spice. The tagline "Smell like the man your man could smell like" directly addressed this audience.

The campaign generated immediate viral spread following the Super Bowl broadcast. Wieden+Kennedy documented that the commercial accumulated millions of YouTube views within the first week of posting. The creative execution — the seamlessly edited single-take feel, the directly-to-camera delivery, and the absurdist transition sequence — was widely shared and discussed on social media as an example of genuinely creative advertising.

The campaign created a cultural moment: the "Hello, ladies" opening line became a recognisable parody element, and the campaign's visual style was imitated in fan-made parodies and other brand content. Cultural saturation of this kind — where a campaign generates imitation — indicates penetration beyond the paid media audience into genuine cultural consciousness.

In July 2010, five months after the Super Bowl campaign, Wieden+Kennedy launched the social media response campaign. The agency set up a production studio and, over 48 hours, created and posted approximately 180 personalised video responses to specific social media comments, tweets, and forum posts from users and public figures. Each response featured Isaiah Mustafa as the Old Spice character responding directly to the specific person who had posted, addressing them by name and responding to their specific comment.

The campaign was executed in near-real-time: the creative team would identify a tweet or comment, write a script, film Mustafa's response, edit it, and post it within hours. The rapid turnaround — something only possible with a dedicated studio and production team on-site — created the impression of genuine, spontaneous responses that had the scale and production quality of commercial spots.

The responses were directed at a mix of audiences: everyday Twitter users who had posted about Old Spice; celebrities and public figures with large followings (specific responses went to Ellen DeGeneres, Alyssa Milano, and Demi Moore, among others); Reddit users who had posted in Old Spice-related threads; and Digg users who had submitted Old Spice content. By responding across multiple platforms simultaneously, the campaign created a sense of omnipresence.

The responses to celebrities were particularly effective at extending reach: when Isaiah Mustafa posted a personalised video response to a celebrity with millions of followers, that celebrity would often share or retweet the response — distributing it to their audience at no additional cost. A single celebrity response could reach millions of additional viewers.

The response campaign's selection of response targets was not random. Wieden+Kennedy prioritised responses to social media users with the highest follower counts and most engaged audiences — maximising the organic reach of each response through the target's own distribution. This was an early, sophisticated application of what would later be codified as "influencer marketing" — using individuals with large audiences to distribute brand content to audiences that paid media could not efficiently reach.

The technical execution of the response campaign was complex: a social media monitoring team to identify and select response targets; a writing team to quickly develop scripts for each response; a production crew on-site for rapid filming and editing; and a distribution team to post responses to the correct platforms with the correct @ mentions. Wieden+Kennedy documented this process in presentations at industry events, describing the workflow that made 180 personalised videos possible in 48 hours.

Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy published the following documented results from the combined campaign (original commercial plus response campaign): the response campaign videos accumulated over 40 million views in the first week following the July 2010 response campaign; Old Spice's YouTube channel became the most-subscribed brand channel on YouTube at that time; and Old Spice body wash sales increased 107% in the 30 days following the response campaign (figures cited in Procter & Gamble official communications and Wieden+Kennedy case study documentation).

The campaign won the Grand Prix at Cannes Lions 2010 in multiple categories, and is widely cited in advertising and marketing education as a defining example of integrated campaign and social media execution. Wieden+Kennedy's documented case study of the campaign has been widely referenced in marketing literature.

The Old Spice response campaign established a template for social media engagement that many brands attempted to replicate in subsequent years. The key elements — real-time, personalised, high-quality content responses at scale — became aspirational standards for brand social media teams. The production model (dedicated studio, on-site creative team for rapid execution) informed how agencies structured social media rapid-response capabilities.

The campaign also demonstrated that scale (large production effort) and authenticity (feeling like genuine personal responses) are not mutually exclusive in social media — with sufficient production investment, brand content can feel personal even when it is produced at media production quality standards.

Sources & Authentication