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You know those YouTube videos with that manly Old Spice guy and his hilarious responses to Twitter fans? Of course you do. So does everybody, it seems, because Old Spice body wash sales have increased 107% in the past month in part thanks to that social media marketing campaign.
Already published stats from video analytics company Visible Measures that made it clear that the Old Spice guy was a hugely successful initiative from marketing firm Wieden + Kennedy, achieving millions of viral video views quicker than past hits like Susan Boyle and U.S. President Barack Obama’s election victory speech.
The statistic of the 107% sales increase over the past month comes from Nielsen, which also revealed that sales increased 55% over the past three months. Individual products that were slipping in sales saw spikes after actor Isaiah Mustafa showed them off in the TV and Internet video ads. Those numbers were cited in an article at BrandWeek.
The campaign began with simple TV ads, which then went viral on YouTube. The follow-up program in which Mustafa recorded funny videos in response to fans, bloggers and Twitter influencers hit it out of the park in the zeitgeist. Adweek quotes Visible Measures’ Matt Cutler saying that the total web views for all Old Spice brand videos have reached 110 million, “surpassing the reach of traditional broadcast.”
Adweek also reports that Old Spice is working on a new campaign, but that it’s “unrelated” to the Mustafa videos. That’s a tough act to follow, but we don’t think anyone at Old Spice is complaining today.
Update: Some readers have pointed to news stories saying that sales for Old Spice went down. Not exactly.
The earlier reports of drops in sales referred to the Old Spice product Red Zone After Hours, which experienced a 7% drop. WARC, the source for that story, also acknowledges Nielsen’s data, saying, “Despite reports to the contrary, Nielsen data shows that sales of the Old Spice Body Wash range as a whole rose by 55% over the last three months, and by 107% in the last month alone.”
We will acknowledge the point that there is simply a timeframe correlation between the boosts in Old Spice sales and the ad campaign.
This morning i had a chance to aee the "Old Spice Guy," otherwise known as Isaiah Mustafa, on "GMA." He has been responding to tweets with personalized YouTube videos. Last night I sent a tweet and asked how President Obama can gain back some of the female support he has lost.
Old Spice Guy had these suggestions:
--From now on Obama should only be seen in a towel.
--Obama should begin his State of the Union address with "Hellloo ladies" instead of "My fellow Americans."
--And finally, end the speech with a "presidential ab point."
A website offering soldiers a chance to talk live via streaming video with their families back home or giving politicians live, unfiltered access to their constituents might seem destined for a niche existence, but try telling that to John Ham.
The former U.S. Army commander, who co-founded his Ustream service in 2006 as a live Web service for the military, has stars in his eyes. Hollywood stars.
By courting the world of entertainment, Ustream has grown far beyond Ham's original projections.
The audience for most shows is still small, with the most popular averaging 1 million to 2 million viewers. And Ustream has yet to make a profit. But Ham might be onto something. He has quietly raised $90 million to invest in live webcasting. Ustream competitor Livestream has raised $13 million, according to CEO Max Haot.
The money is going for "growth" in entertainment, Ham, 32, says, in an interview at his offices here, and expansion into Asia. "This is a huge race and a big opportunity for us. We want to lead and win in the live video market."
For starters, he doubled his workforce to 150 in the past six months, hiring mostly engineers and advertising sales staff. He opened an office in Los Angeles and is persuading Hollywood to use Ustream for premieres of movie events. The films The Killers, Avatar and Disney's Alice in Wonderland showed their red-carpet events live on Ustream. The service shared ad revenue with the studios.
Viewership for the "live on the Net" websites, dominated by Ustream, Justin.tv and Livestream, has grown substantially over the past year. Ustream averages 47 million viewers monthly, compared with 17 million for Justin.tv and 15 million for Livestream, measurement service Quantcast says.
The YouTube factor
The one big potential stumbling block for all of them is YouTube, which dominates online video with 144 million visitors monthly. YouTube is known for clips but has been expanding into complete shows. Of late, it has experimented with live webcasts of concerts and sporting and political events. Tech analysts speculate that YouTube will soon join the live movement.
Ham isn't worried. If that happens, he says, "It will grow the overall pie for live video. And we're positioned to be the primary beneficiary of that."
After a stint in the U.S. Army, Ham and co-founder Brad Hunstable returned in 2006 from South Korea, where they were stationed, with their idea for a service that would let soldiers talk to their loved ones, live. They wanted an alternative to webcams — something that requires only a computer and an Internet connection. They teamed with Budapest-based Gyula Feher, which developed the site, and went live in 2007. (Two-thirds of the Ustream staff are still based in Budapest.)
Ustream began gaining audience among the military, its desired base, but it quickly grew to teens, businesses (especially radio stations) and politicians. President Obama used Ustream during his campaign, and the live webcast of his inauguration remains Ustream's most-watched event, garnering 3.8 million viewers.
Gen Isayama, a partner at DCM, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm, which has invested $11 million in Ustream, says high-profile events, such as movie premieres and award preshows, boost Ustream's audience and attract advertisers. He says most of Ustream's undisclosed ad revenue comes from the big shows.
"There's only a certain amount of airtime you can promote to, on television," says Bill Bradford, a senior vice president at Fox Broadcasting, which is using Ustream for coverage of celebrity arrivals at the upcoming Teen Choice Awards on Aug. 8, the night before the show airs on TV. "But the Internet is wide open. We want to take advantage of it."
James McQuivey, an analyst at market tracker Forrester Research, believes that if Ustream keeps its costs down, enough people with non-prime-time interests will stop by Ustream to make it a viable business. "This is a great way to get niche products out there."
But Dan Rayburn, an analyst at rival researcher Frost & Sullivan, doubts live webcasting will ever turn a big profit. "The biggest challenge they have is the business model," he says. "The ad revenue just isn't there to support it." He thinks the most likely way investors will get their money back is by selling to a big media company. "That's got to be the goal, because they're not going to make $90 million back in advertising," he says.
Isayama, who sits on the Ustream board, is optimistic. "There are enough live events waiting to be monetized," he says, if you add up all the niche programming out there, from conferences and lectures to small performances by jazz artists who can't get TV time. "We can create a triple-digit business."
And with $90 million to play with, "It's good to have a big war chest in the bank, to jump on opportunities when they arrive," he adds.
We’ve collected 10 hilarious Old Spice Guy video responses right here to celebrate one of the most popular social media campaigns of all time.
Among the fantastic responses: a marriage proposal, an attempt to woo a TV star, and all sorts of geek in-jokes. Enjoy. And we know you’ll fill us in if you think we omitted your favorite!
In case you’ve been missing out, here’s the scoop: The Old Spice deodorant company signed up former NFL wide receiver and all-around preposterously sexy dude Isaiah Mustafa to make a series of funny TV commercials pointing out that if only men would wear Old Spice, they could be as awesome as he.
Later, the campaign reached epic proportions when Mustafa began responding to Twitter fans and bloggers with personalized video messages on YouTube . He made countless responses before throwing in the literal towel in favor of a chainsaw and a giant fish. Yep, you read that right!
Mustafa may have stepped away from his online role as the Old Spice Guy, but he left behind a huge library of hilarious videos addressed to bloggers, celebrities and plain Joe and Jane fans. We recommend watching them all when you have time, but this list will start you off with the very best of the best. Deeper cuts are your discretion.
“I’m setting the example, and it’s going to be puzzled over and studied and followed, from now on.” – John Doe, Seven.
Although Wieden + Kennedy had a very different aim than the homicidal “John Doe” character from David Fincher’s thriller Seven, this is probably what the advertising agency behind Old Spice’s latest marketing campaign must be thinking right now.
The campaign, in which the “Old Spice guy” — as actor Isaiah Mustafa, who starred in most of Old Spice’s recent commercials, has come to be known as on the Internet — ended today. In his final tweet and video, Mustafa says that “like all great things this too must end.”
And then he catches a giant fish that falls from nowhere.
The team behind this amazingly well-run campaign managed to engage half of the Internet, and provoke almost unequivocally positive results from social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter. Hell, even the comments on YouTube were overwhelmingly positive — and that never happens. The Old Spice Twitter account accumulated tens of thousands of new followers and the YouTube videos amassed hundreds of thousands of views.
Everything was run perfectly. The Old Spice guy recorded his video responses in rapid succession, an amazing feat in itself which cannot be truly appreciated if you’ve never been in front of a camera. His answers were a key mix of coolness and the stuff internet memes are made of. The actual brand — Old Spice — was never shoved down viewers’ throats. Most importantly, all of it was incredibly fun to watch.
The team behind the campaign took great care to engage celebrities, influencers, common folk and popular social media sites in balanced quantities. And it knew exactly how to talk to them. In his penultimate video, the Old Spice guy talks directly to his daughter, explaining that until recently, he was just a struggling actor no one has ever heard of. When was the last time a marketing campaign spoke directly to you in such a frank way, making you laugh and cry at the same time?
Wieden + Kennedy have set a standard marketing experts will admire and follow in the years to come. This is the future of marketing.
The Old Spice guy just took his YouTube campaign to a whole new level by proposing to a woman on behalf of one of his Twitter followers. The fan tweeted within hours that she’d agreed to marry him.
Yesterday, Old Spice started posting YouTube videos featuring the shirtless man from the popular TV commercials delivering personalized messages to fans on Twitter, Facebook and other websites. Regular fans got video responses, but the Old Spice guy also smartly targeted social media-savvy celebrities and bloggers to get the word out and achieve viral status.
A fan named Johannes S. Beals tweeted, “Can U Ask my girlfriend to marry me? Her name is Angela A. Hutt-Chamberlin” to Old Spice. The following video popped up on YouTube within an hour, and Old Spice tweeted it at Beals.
Just a few hours later, Beals tweeted at Old Spice: “SHE SAID YES!!!!” Many users congratulated him, but a few questioned whether or not it was legit. To prove it, he uploaded this picture of his new fiancée wearing her diamond ring. Congratulations to the bride and groom to be!
While the Old Spice guy is new on the scene, Twitter-based proposals aren’t new at all. When we compiled a list of the top 10 geekiest marriage proposals, we dedicated a section to Twitter proposals, highlighting @garazi’s proposal to @stefsull (probably the first) as well as tech blogger Grant Robertson’s proposal to Christina Warren.
Old Spice Guy Isaiah Mustafa, has been tweeting just-for-you-vids to a bevy of Internet folk all day.
The Old Spice Guy is undoubtedly one of the most beloved commercial characters in recent memory — he’s like The Most Interesting Man in the World, but young and apparently unable to stay fully clothed. He burst on the scene back in February and his videos quickly went viral on YouTube .
Well now he’s apparently taking awesomeness to a new level — or the ad execs behind his campaign are, rather. He seems to have heralded the deluge of vids with a tweet:
He then proceeded to send out vids via Twitter to bloggers who have written about him in the past, YouTube commenters, random folks asking random questions on Yahoo Answers, and various and sundry people who have tweeted at him today. He’s working pretty fast, too. After posting a call for questions on Reddit four hours ago, he responded to a cadre of questions rather rapidly. (In other news, his abs must be ti-red.)
This campaign really is a perfect storm of viralty — not only does it target specific bloggers (who are then more likely to cover the whole thing), it also reaches out to less prominent individuals who can be made more aware of Old Spice. Moreover, they become personally invested in the brand because they have actually become a part of the world it has created. We’re not sure if this marathon of videos will lead to more Old Spice products sold — but it definitely creates a brand identity that people will be interested and excited to engage with.
We’re embedding the Old Spice guy’s personal message to Perez Hilton below — Hilton wrote about a new spot at the end of June. (FYI, we also tweeted at the shirtless wonder, so we’ll update you if he deigns to make us a vid.)
NB: Commenter Liz Pullen also points out that “Old Spice” is a Promoted Trending Topic today. Very clever…
A flash mob is defined by Wikipedia as “a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse.”
Social media has greatly aided the organization of such events, and proof of their existence has been caught on camera only to go viral online via sites like YouTube .
While there are a few groups who still carry on the practice, Improv Everywhere being the notable example, a high profile flash mob event is likely to have corporate backing, as companies jump on the bandwagon as part of viral marketing campaigns.
We’ve rounded up the very best flash mob events from both big brands and ordinary bands of people. For your viewing pleasure, here are 15 fine examples of flash mobbery.
What do you get when you combine one the NBA’s most colorful and eccentric players, a microphone and a championship victory for the Los Angeles Lakers? One hell of a post-game interview and press conference, that’s what.
Last night, Lakers forward Ron Artest couldn’t contain his excitement as his team secured the NBA championship over the Boston Celtics in a thrilling game seven. The result was a legendary post-game interview where Artest thanked “everybody in my hood,” his psychiatrist, and countless others, then exploded in joy over winning his first NBA championship.
That wasn’t the end of it though; the Artest show continued with a ridiculous press conference. You knew it wasn’t going to be a normal press conference when Artest grabbed a box of Wheaties and screamed at the random journalists “behind the laptops” to acknowledge him.
The resulting videos have gone viral on YouTube , Twitter, and Google. They are top trends on almost every social media website. Just watch the videos and you’ll see why.
Enjoy:
It was the perfect game that wasn't. Umpire Jim Joyce mistakenly ruined Armando Galarraga's perfect game with a bad call. Take a look at other refs who changed the course of sports history with bad calls.
If you're English, then Geoff Hurst's shot that hit the underside of the bar during extra time in the 1966 World Cup final clearly crossed the line. If you're German (or Scottish), it's equally evident that the ball didn't entirely cross the line (for a goal to be counted, all of the ball must cross the line). The referee wasn't certain, so he deferred to his Azerbaijani linesman, Tofik Bakhramov, who said the goal was good. This gave England a 3-2 lead (the game eventually ended 4-2). Forty-four years on, the truth is that nobody can say with any certainty whether the goal should have stood. But when a memorial was unveiled in Baku to Bakhramov in 2004 (he died in 1996), one of the grateful guests was Hurst. As far as he was concerned, Bakhramov made the right call.
In the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 1985 World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals were leading the Kansas City Royals 1-0. The Cardinals were ahead in the "Show-Me Series" 3-2, and were just three outs away from clinching their second title in four years. Jorge Orta hit a grounder to first, which Jack Clark of St. Louis fielded cleanly; rookie closer Todd Worrell, covering first, took Clark's throw. Orta was obviously out, but umpire Don Denkinger called him safe. Every replay showed that Denkinger got it wrong by a mile. The Royals rallied in the ninth to win 2-1, and then blanked the Cards 11-0 in Game 7, giving Kansas City its first, and only, World Series title. "I had 30 great years ... and I had one call that's all anybody wants to talk about," Denkinger told the New York Post after Jim Joyce's erroneous two-out call on June 2, 2010, cost Detroit's Armando Galarraga a perfect game. "It's not right. But it's the way the game's played, and that's what happens." In the aftermath of the Galarraga affair, several websites commented that Joyce had a "Denkinger moment.
So much for sports being a universal language. Babel-like chaos descended on the basketball court during the final moments of the 1972 Olympic matchup between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., complete with multiple clock resets, misunderstood buzzers and premature celebrations.
The Americans had never lost an Olympic basketball game before they went up against the Soviets for the gold in Munich. For a time, it appeared that they would keep the streak going: after two successful free throws, the U.S. led 50-49. But then play was stopped with one second left — the Soviets said they had called for a timeout — and the officials decided to put three seconds on the clock. It wasn't enough for the U.S.S.R. to retake the lead. At least, not the first time. After Team USA had already jumped for joy, the clock was re-reset — since it hadn't been done correctly before — and the Soviets scored, winning the Cold War–era battle 51-50. The U.S. protested, but their appeal was denied, leaving the U.S.S.R. victorious. The American players boycotted the medal ceremony and never claimed the silver.
He might be a celebrated boxer nowadays — with the distinction of once holding seven belts at the same time and being named Fighter of the Decade in the 1990s by the Boxing Writers Association of America — but American Roy Jones Jr. was once on the receiving end of one of the sport's worst ever calls. During the Seoul Olympics of 1988, Jones bravely battled through to the final against South Korea's Park Si Hun, not losing a round in the process. How that would change.
Jones, then 19, overwhelmed his inferior opponent to the extent that the South Korean took a standing eight count in the second round and could land only 32 punches to Jones' 86. American commentators rightly described it as a walkover, and South Korean radio remarked that Park needed a knockout to win, as he was so behind on points going into the last round. When the fight finished, Jones and his corner waited for the judges' announcement that he'd won; instead, they gave the fight — and gold medal — to Park by a score of 3-2. Jones and his team were left stunned, and even the referee's jaw dropped. Four months later, the three judges were banned for two years (two of them were later banned for life), and rumors swirled that they were paid off. Years later, Jones was awarded the Olympic Order, which is given to individuals for a particularly distinguished contribution to the Games, though it's rarely given to active athletes like Jones. It can't, however, replace the gold medal that never was.
Probably no other decision in soccer history has been shown more than Argentine Diego Maradona's "Hand of God" goal that was scored against England in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinal. The undercurrent to the fractious match was the Falklands war, which took place between the nations earlier that decade. Relations wouldn't improve after this fiery encounter. There can be no debate that Maradona punched the ball over goalkeeper Peter Shilton. He then coined the infamous phrase in the aftermath of his side's 2-1 victory en route to Argentina's winning their second World Cup. Maradona undid some of the damage by scoring his team's second goal, which has rightly been viewed as one of the greatest individual goals in the sport's history. But the hand ball will surely be brought up again if the sides meet in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.
Anytime Hue Hollins visits the Big Apple, New York Knicks fans should treat him to a steak at Sardi's. In 1994, the Knicks trailed the Chicago Bulls 86-85 in the final seconds of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals. The series was tied at two games each, and the Bulls, playing in the midst of Michael Jordan's baseball sabbatical, were one defensive stand away from securing a crucial road win and perhaps stealing the series. New York's Hubert Davis launched a shot from the top of the key; it clanked off the rim, but Hollins called a foul on Chicago's Scottie Pippen, sending Davis to the foul line for two shots. Yes, Pippen touched Davis' arm, but he did so after the shot was released. In the last seconds of a crucial game, basketball's ancient, unwritten code demands that the ref let it go. But Hollins blew his whistle, Davis hit both free throws, and the Knicks won both the game and the series. The name Hue Hollins still makes Chicago cringe.
Wrong calls are bad enough. But they're even worse when there's no ref to blame. Argentine Roberto De Vicenzo's final-round score of 65 at the 1968 Masters Golf Tournament should have led him to a playoff for the championship. But when he traded the club for the pen, he lost his chance. His playing partner had recorded the wrong score for one hole — marking a par instead of a birdie — and De Vicenzo signed the scorecard, meaning that number (off by one stroke) counted. "What a stupid I am to be wrong here," he said. And it was his birthday too.
"We had nothing left. They had nothing left. Thank God it's over," said Stanley Cup VIP Joe Nieuwendyk after his team, the Dallas Stars, won Game 6 of the 1999 finals in the third overtime. While the players may have been happy to have the match decided, the long-awaited end was just the beginning of the controversy over the winning goal.
Sports Illustrated called having one of the most exciting Stanley Cup finals ever decided by a controversial play "the NHL's worst nightmare." At 14:51 in the third overtime, Dallas' Brett Hull made a rebound shot on the edge of the crease to seal his team's 2-1 victory over the Buffalo Sabres. At the time, there was a rule that said players were not allowed in the goalie's crease unless the puck was already there, and video replays show that Hull's foot was there first. Outraged, the Sabres refused to leave their locker room for 20 minutes. They were prepared to put their jerseys back on and finish the game. But NHL officials supervisor Bryan Lewis said Hull could in fact have one foot in the crease and make a goal. While that seemed to go against the rule, Lewis said it was allowed because Hull had maintained possession of the puck the entire time. Sabres fans took up the rally cry of "No goal," claiming the officials didn't want the embarrassment of having to restart a game everyone thought was over. Nevertheless, the Stars hoisted the Cup over their heads and enjoyed their dubious victory. The crease rule was changed shortly thereafter.
Picture this: 31 seconds left in the 1990 national college football championship game between Colorado and Missouri. Colorado is down 26-31. First down: Colorado quarterback Charles Johnson spikes the ball onto the ground to stop the clock. Second down: Johnson hands off on a plunge and the ball carrier runs up the middle but fails to score. Third down: Another plunge play, no score. Fourth down: Repeat: a plunge, no score. Fifth down: Johnson holds on to the ball and dives over the goal line for a touchdown. Colorado wins 33-31.
Wait a minute ... fifth down?! Since when are those allowed? The officials apparently lost count of the downs, but they refused to correct their mistake and continued the game — an error that is perhaps even more embarrassing than the original flub. Missouri's chancellor, Haskell Monroe Jr., said it was "incomprehensible" that seven officials could not count to four. Seven Big Eight officials were suspended as a result of the infamous down.
Cricket fans the world over have long debated the merits of Australian umpire Daryl Harper. But he didn't endear himself to supporters of India maestro Sachin Tendulkar by giving Tendulkar out against Australia in a 1999-2000 series (home nations used to be umpired by hometown officials) in a most controversial manner. The Leg Before Wicket (LBW) rule benefits the fielding side if a batsman doesn't offer a shot but rather deflects the ball using the leg and the umpire believes that the ball would have gone on to hit the wicket instead. The problem in this instance was that Tendulkar was actually ducking Glenn McGrath's delivery, and the ball hit him far higher up; nevertheless, Harper gave the out. It quickly became known as Shoulder Before Wicket and caused a furor among the cricket community, with many believing that the umpire shouldn't have given him out. Harper has since said that of all his umpiring decisions, "the one that I would like the world to forget is the Sachin one," but he never apologized to the player. For his part, Tendulkar didn't complain (he was also out for zero runs) as India crumbled to a heavy defeat
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