Old Spice is currently utilizing Youtube to advertise by speaking directly to it’s Twitter audience. What resulted is a brilliant marketing effort.

With a few million views under it’s original “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” commercial, it quickly became apparent that Old Spice had a marketing gem on it’s hands. They also released a series of commercials strictly on Youtube that consisted of a very strong guy screaming about how powerful Old Spice deoderant was. From there the stage was set. Soon, Old Spice had achieved cult-icon status, and the commercials spread like wildfire over the internet – the true meaning of “Viral Video Marketing”. But it gets interesting when you consider the next step they took in the process.

For years, advertising companies have tried to bridge the disconnect between consumers and advertisers because ultimately, they advertisers were never truly able to respond to consumer demand in a very agile way. The difference here is that Old Spice has finally figured out how to cross that gap. By combining a now-recognizable face with the companies Old Spice Twitter Account, and lets face it, fantastic writers, they were able to come up with a series of videos based directly off of viewer demand in such a rapid pace (in some cases up to FOUR videos per hour!) that it kept viewers melting that refresh key to see if a new video was out. It caught the attention of internet forum giant Something Awful, the Scientology-warring group Anonymous, and even the likes of celebrities such as Demi Moore and going through the rigors of hand-writing a note and sending flowers overnight to Alyssa Milano (the end result of which was Ms. Milano making a video in the same fashion, requesting that, in order to continue “Their Relationship” the Old Spice man must donate $100,000 to help clean up the Gulf. You’re move, Old Spice).

I hate to say it, but one man even went so far as to propose to his girlfriend using the Old Spice writers to do the proposal for him.

Forget putting a name up on a scoreboard, at the time of this writing, that video has over 100,000 people cheering that guy on. Can you say Old Spice customer for life? That’s the point that I’m trying to get to. All of these efforts allowed Old Spice to connect with the customer that was only previously achieved by having some poor bastards in a focus group for hours on end thinking about what the next great marketing plan will be. That may be the way this whole ordeal started out, but it sure as hell wasn’t how it ended. So congratulations, Old Spice, you have managed to accomplish what many companies before you have failed to do so properly and completely. Your marketing team deserves a considerable bonus this month.

Cheers,

– Chris