A companion piece to Episode 8 of the BMD marketing case-study series. Episode 7 was about a company that cut its budget and found out what it already owned. This one is about a company that changed who it was talking to. The video tells the story in minutes. This is the full autopsy: what Old Spice actually decided, why the viral moment everybody credits arrived two months after the sales lift had started, and how to find out who really buys from you.
Contents
The brand before the ad
Old Spice in 2006 was a brand your grandfather wore. P&G had bought it in 1990 and then spent fifteen years watching Axe take the young end of the category.
In 2007 the answer was 1-800-PROVE-IT, a campaign built on the product's odour-fighting claims. It flunked. Arguing performance against a competitor selling desire is a losing trade, and the category had already decided which one it wanted.
In 2008 Wieden+Kennedy tried the opposite. Swagger gave the brand a straight face and an absurd promise, with Bruce Campbell delivering it. Sales of the Swagger scent quadrupled in its first year, and the work took a Silver Cyber Lion in 2009 and a Silver Effie in 2010. That is the part nobody quotes: before the famous ad there was a two-year repositioning with its own effectiveness award already on the shelf.
So the 2010 film was not a lightning strike on a dying brand. It was the third act of a turnaround that already had proof behind it.
The decision that came before the script
P&G's research said something ordinary and awkward: about 60 percent of men's body wash is bought by women. Men were the users. Women were, in a large share of households, the buyers.
Every agency in the category knew this. Almost nobody acted on it, because the obvious thing to do with a men's product is talk to men, and men's grooming had spent a decade doing exactly that, louder every year.
Wieden+Kennedy acted on it. The brief became: speak to both at once, to the woman as the buyer and the man as the user, inside the same 30 seconds, without insulting either. That constraint is what produced the tone. A man addressing women directly, about their men, with a completely straight face, is the only register in which one script can do both jobs.
Read the famous ad again with that in mind and the jokes stop being jokes. They are the solution to an audience problem.
The two days that became the legend
In July 2010 the team put Isaiah Mustafa in a bathroom set with a room full of writers and answered the internet out loud. Between 12 and 14 July they scripted, shot and posted 186 short videos, many of them finished in ten to fifteen minutes. At one point that week, eight of the eleven most watched videos on YouTube were Old Spice replies.
The numbers were real: 5.9 million views on the first day, more than 40 million within the week, over 65 million in the end, and more than a billion unpaid impressions. The work took the Film Grand Prix at Cannes in 2010 and a Primetime Emmy for outstanding commercial.
This is the part of the story that gets taught. It is also the part that matters least to your company.
The scoreboard
| Metric | Figure |
|---|---|
| The brand before | P&G bought Old Spice in 1990; the 2007 1-800-PROVE-IT campaign failed; the 2008 Swagger work quadrupled that scent's first-year sales and won a 2009 Silver Cyber Lion and a 2010 Silver Effie |
| The insight | About 60% of men's body wash is bought by women, so the buyer and the user are usually different people |
| The launch | The film posted online on 4 February 2010 and reached television on 8 February, the day after Super Bowl XLIV. It was never a Super Bowl buy |
| The target | An internal goal of 15% growth in body wash sales |
| The result | Nielsen: Red Zone unit sales up 60% year on year by May 2010; the body wash range up 55% over three months and 107% in the last month by July; up 125% year on year by the end of July, an all-time brand high |
| The position | The number one men's body wash in the United States by the end of 2010 |
| The viral layer | 186 response videos scripted, shot and posted between 12 and 14 July 2010; 5.9 million views on day one, more than 65 million in total, more than a billion unpaid impressions; the Cannes Film Grand Prix and a Primetime Emmy |
| The contested reading | SymphonyIRI showed Red Zone After Hours body wash down 7% over the 52 weeks ended 13 June 2010; Old Spice answered with Nielsen data showing its body wash line up 11% over twelve months. Several national coupon drops, including buy-one-get-one and up to 4 dollars off a bottle, ran alongside the lift |
The 60% and the 125% come from different places: the first is P&G's own consumer research, the second is Nielsen retail measurement. The 7% decline is a single scent on a rival tracker over a window that mostly predates the campaign, which is why it belongs in the record and not in the verdict.
The autopsy: the lift came before the legend
"Old Spice made a viral video and doubled its sales." The sales figure is real. The order of events is wrong, and the order is the whole lesson.
Start with the dates. Nielsen had Red Zone unit sales up 60 percent year on year by May 2010. The Response campaign, the 186 videos everyone remembers, ran from 12 to 14 July. The thing credited with the result arrived roughly two months after the result had started. The response videos were an amplifier bolted onto a machine that was already running. They were not the machine.
Second, the sales figures were argued about at the time, and the argument is the useful part. In July 2010 SymphonyIRI showed Red Zone After Hours body wash down 7 percent over the 52 weeks ended 13 June. Old Spice answered with Nielsen data showing its body wash up 11 percent over twelve months. Both readings were honest: different trackers, one scent against a whole range, and a 52-week window that mostly predates the campaign. A brand that can be up 125 percent and down 7 percent at the same time is a brand whose result depends entirely on which line you measure.
Third, price was in the room. Several national high-value coupon drops ran alongside the lift, including buy-one-get-one offers and up to 4 dollars off a single bottle. Part of the 107 percent month was persuasion and part of it was discount, and no public number separates the two. That does not make the campaign a fraud. It makes the headline figure a joint result, which is what almost every headline figure is.
So what actually happened? A 2008 repositioning gave the brand a voice. A research finding gave it an audience nobody else was serving. A large television buy put the film in front of that audience for five months. A coupon drop removed the last reason not to try it. Then 186 videos in a bathroom made the whole thing famous. Take away the last step and the sales lift still happens. Take away the second step and there is no campaign to make famous.
Quibi bought attention with no product underneath it. Bud Light repositioned without knowing who its core customer was. Airbnb found out what it already owned. Old Spice is the case where somebody defined the audience correctly first, and everything people admire about the campaign sits downstream of that one decision.
The user, the buyer, and the gatekeeper
Three roles, and companies that have never separated them tend to write to the wrong one for years.
The user consumes the product. The buyer pays for it. The gatekeeper can say no, and often says nothing else. In a household buying body wash, the man is the user and, most of the time, the woman is the buyer. In a Saudi mid-market company buying software, the engineer is the user, the department head is the buyer, and finance is the gatekeeper. In a clinic, the patient is the user and the mother booking the appointment is the buyer and the gatekeeper at once.
The default is to write to the user, because the user is who the product is for, and because the product team talks about the user all day. It is a comfortable mistake. It also means your entire message can be aimed at somebody who never opens the invoice.
Nobody inside an ad account will catch this for you. Targeting settings let you pick an audience; they do not tell you whether you picked the right role. That is a decision, it belongs to somebody in the marketing function, and it has to be written down where the rest of the company can argue with it. In most of the 40+ departments we have worked inside, it was never written down at all.
The right order: name the buyer, then write
Write the three roles down for your best-selling product, one line each, with a real person in mind. Who uses it, who pays for it, who can block it. If two of them turn out to be the same person, say so and move on. The exercise takes twenty minutes and most companies have never done it.
Then check it with a receipt rather than an opinion. Pull the last 100 orders and look at whose name and whose card is on them. Ask the sales team who they actually negotiate with, not who the product was designed for. Ask reception who books. The gap between the answer in the room and the answer in the data is the size of the opportunity.
Then decide who the message is for, and accept that it will read slightly wrong to the other two. Old Spice's ad addressed women and was watched by men, which is the trick, and the trick only exists because somebody picked a primary role instead of trying to please all three. Re-run the check whenever the category moves, because buying roles move with it: online grocery shifted a lot of household buying, and enterprise software shifted a lot of gatekeeping from finance to procurement.
None of this needs a Riyadh-sized media budget. A perfume retailer here sells most of its men's lines to women buying gifts, and writes every caption to men. A software company writes to the engineer who will use the product while the finance manager signs the contract. A children's clinic writes to patients who cannot read. Each of those is one afternoon away from talking to the person who actually pays.
The takeaways
The buyer and the user are different people more often than not. Name both before you write a word. About 60 percent of men's body wash is bought by women, and Old Spice was the brand that acted on it.
The famous part is rarely the load-bearing part. The lift was already 60 percent by May. The 186 videos ran in July. Amplifiers collect the credit that machines earn.
One result, several honest numbers. Up 125 percent on one tracker, down 7 percent on another, with a coupon drop in the middle. Ask which line before you quote the figure.
There was no overnight. 1-800-PROVE-IT failed in 2007, Swagger repositioned the brand in 2008, and the famous ad came in 2010. Two years of work is the part nobody copies.
Audience definition is a strategy decision, not a targeting setting. It belongs to somebody in your marketing department, written down, and open to argument.
Frequently asked questions
Did Old Spice really increase sales 125 percent?
Yes, on one measure. Nielsen recorded Old Spice body wash unit sales up 125 percent year on year by the end of July 2010, an all-time high for the brand, against an internal target of 15 percent. Earlier that year Nielsen had Red Zone unit sales up 60 percent by May. A rival tracker, SymphonyIRI, showed one scent, Red Zone After Hours, down 7 percent over the 52 weeks ended 13 June 2010, a window that mostly predates the campaign. Both are real measurements of different things.
Was "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" a Super Bowl ad?
No. The film was posted online on 4 February 2010 and reached television on 8 February, the day after Super Bowl XLIV. P&G did not buy time in the game. The confusion is common enough to be worth checking before repeating it in a deck, because it changes the budget the story implies.
Why did the campaign talk to women about a men's product?
Because P&G's research said roughly 60 percent of men's body wash is bought by women. The user was male and the buyer was often female, so the brief was to speak to both at once. The tone of the ad, a man addressing women directly about their men, is the solution to that constraint rather than a joke somebody thought of first.
Did the 186 response videos cause the sales increase?
They cannot have caused the start of it. The response videos ran from 12 to 14 July 2010, and Nielsen already had Red Zone unit sales up 60 percent by May. The response campaign made the brand famous and extended the run. The lift itself began with the repositioning, the audience decision, and a heavy television buy that preceded the videos by months.
How do I find out who actually buys from my company?
Pull the last 100 orders and look at whose name and payment method is on them. Ask the sales team who they negotiate with, and ask reception who books. Compare that against who your marketing currently addresses. Where the two lists disagree, the marketing is talking to the wrong role, and fixing it costs nothing except the decision.
Should a mid-market company try to make something go viral?
Copy the audience decision, not the virality. Old Spice's famous week rested on a brand voice built in 2008, a research finding about who pays, and months of paid reach. A company that names its real buyer correctly gets most of the benefit with none of the luck. A company that only tries to be funny gets a video nobody bought anything from.
This article is part of BMD's marketing case-study series. Episode 8 is about who you are actually talking to. Episode 9 is ninety seconds of a gorilla playing the drums, with no chocolate on screen, made to rebuild trust after a product recall. That is Cadbury.
Sources and further reading
Nielsen retail measurement of Old Spice body wash, as reported in the campaign's Effie Awards case study and in the trade press: Red Zone unit sales up 60 percent year on year by May 2010, the body wash range up 55 percent over three months and 107 percent in the last month by July 2010, and up 125 percent year on year by the end of July 2010, an all-time high for the brand against an internal target of 15 percent. Procter & Gamble consumer research, cited in the same Effie case, that roughly 60 percent of men's body wash is bought by women. Wieden+Kennedy's own record of Smell Like a Man, Man, including the 4 February 2010 online release and the 8 February television debut, the day after Super Bowl XLIV. Ad Age, Jack Neff, 26 July 2010, questioning how much body wash the campaign had actually sold. Brandweek's reading of SymphonyIRI data showing Red Zone After Hours body wash down 7 percent over the 52 weeks ended 13 June 2010, Old Spice's response citing Nielsen data showing the body wash line up 11 percent over twelve months, and the related coverage by Marketplace and CBS News. Adweek, on the national high-value coupon drops, including buy-one-get-one offers and up to 4 dollars off a single bottle, that ran alongside the lift. D&AD's case study of the Response campaign for the 186 videos scripted, shot and posted between 12 and 14 July 2010 in just over two and a half days, the 5.9 million first-day views, the 40 million within a week and the 65 million total, and the billion-plus unpaid impressions. Cannes Lions 2010 Film Grand Prix and the Primetime Emmy for outstanding commercial. Coverage of the 2008 Swagger campaign and the failed 2007 1-800-PROVE-IT campaign, including the fourfold first-year increase in Swagger scent sales, the 2009 Silver Cyber Lion and the 2010 Silver Effie.
About BMD
Most companies don't have a marketing problem. They have a marketing department that was never built. BMD is a boutique consultancy that installs structured, measurable marketing departments inside mid-market companies across the GCC. We don't run your campaigns, and we don't hand you a strategy deck and leave. We build the operating system: the structure, the measurement, and the ownership that turn marketing into a function leadership can rely on. The method is the BUILD framework, published and practiced: a book, an online program, a community of Gulf founders and marketers applying it, and diagnostics that replace assumptions with measurement. Delivered in Arabic and English, founder-led.
Redha Alayesh
A marketer with a software engineer's discipline and a scientist's mindset. Across 40+ marketing departments in the GCC, he built the BUILD framework to solve the problem he kept finding: capable marketers trapped inside companies that never built them a department.