The web has been a buzz for the last few days due to the Old Spice social media campaign where in response to fans on Twitter and Facebook, the Old Spice man replied to messages with short thirty second to one minute videos that were witty and funny and probably more important, timely. Over a two day period Old Spice, a Proctor and Gamble Company, worked with their advertising firm to produce dozens of Youtube videos, although I can’t find the exact number. This campaign used the same actor and built on some already impressive TV commercials over the last several weeks. It clearly will be the business case that will be studied and over analyzed for the next few years as the campaign generated tens of millions of pageviews, and caused a lot of offline conversation that will probably help to increase revenue for Old Spice which is ultimately the reason for the campaign.
When everyone is trying to create viral videos and understand how to use social media successfully, how did Old Spice succeed so overwhelmingly? They decided to take a risk. Most companies will never have great success in social media because they are too cautious to ever take the risk that it requires. Two aspects of the Old Spice campaign that made them successful were they made the quick videos without a major concern for the potential negative impact and the willingness to task a risk with their brand although my belief is the risk of the brand is not as significant as many might believe.
Potential Negative Impact Is Not That Significant - One of the biggest fears of social media for businesses is the inability to control the conversation and the potential that someone could have a negative statement about your company and that is just unacceptable. For that reason, most companies are still having internal debates about the need to be active on Facebook or Twitter rather than just getting involved. The reality is that most people on social media sites do not have a large enough audience to have an impact. The person with 75 Twitter followers stating that they had a bad experience is not the end of the world. Most likely, there are less than a handful of people whom even will see the message. Mark Cuban stated this same belief about a year ago, that most of the messages on Twitter are not worth a response because it is not heard by many people. But worrying about the what-if possibilities will keep most companies from ever really getting involved with social media successfully.
Too Brand Conscious – Developing your brand is something that takes years and years to build and should be guarded in every way possible. This leads to very calculated marketing efforts with the approval of executives and lawyers necessary for every piece of collateral, message wording, a commercial production. Due to this, most companies couldn’t duplicate the Old Spice campaign if they wanted to as it would take too long for approval to make the response relevant. Assuming that I am correct and the potential negative impact is not that great, more companies should be willing to respond more timely on social media sites to improve success. That is not to say everyone should use twitter videos because that is not for everyone, but using creative timely responses would prove beneficial for social media success.
While most are studying the delicate intricacies of the Old Spice campaign, there also needs to be an assessment of your corporate culture and the willingness to take that kind of risk. My bet is that there are not many companies that would take the leap, but that also explains why there are so many “viral” videos that never went viral.
Hey you're kinda new here aren't you... You should subscribe to our RSS feed, so you never miss a video. It's also my mission to get to know all my new readers. Follow me on Twitter so we can chat. Thanks for visiting!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 0 comments… add one now }