Old Spice & Social Media Marketing Metrics [INFOGRAPHIC]
But Are They Great?
This Infographic, created for Mashable’s Social Media for Business Leaders Series gives you an insight into the top-performing ad-campaigns propelled by the social media world’s top three pundits; Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. In his introduction to the graphic, Mashable’s Business and Marketing Editor, Todd Wasserman makes an interesting point about the limitations in assessing the true impact of a campaign:
Donny Deutsch, the former adman and talk show host, once recounted a story about a Mitsubishi Super Bowl ad that was tagged with the URL seewhathappens.com.
The ad got 600,000 clicks, Deutsch said, which prompted the carmaker to ask, “Is that good?” Deutsch answered: “We told the client it was great, so it was great!”
The Mitsubishi campaign ran almost eight years ago. Have things changed? Well, as the infographic below shows, there are a lot more metrics, but are they great?
The colossal numbers in the infographic – some in the tens of millions – sound impressive, and in and of themselves they seem to act as poof of campaign success. Certainly, in today’s business environment which is so fixated on statistical achievements, such numbers are the holy grail for advertising companies – the measure of their success. But are these metrics reflected in profits and revenue?
The Old Spice Case Study: “Can Your Brand Sell Like Me?”
When I first saw the Old Spice campaign on television, I was struck by it’s comic brilliance. A film buff with an obsession with clever advertisement, I re-winded it to the start using my sky remote to laugh again, ponder it’s production intricacies and marvel at Old Spice Guy’s charisma. I’ve watch the entire online campaign with fascination and continued to do so even with the (less popular) introduction of “New Old Spice Guy Fabbio”. No wonder the spot garnered 22 million Youtube views in just a week. With over 1.4 billion page impressions the Old Spice campaign still holds the top spot of all time. That said, I have never actually bought an Old Spice product.
So the big question is, do these campaigns land the right hits to ensure return on investment? Old Spice revenues in 2010, after the initial campaign launch, were reported as being down, implying that a viral marketing hit does not always equate to brand success. But a video case study (below) by Ad agency Wieden + Kennedy Portland released in August 2010 suggests differently. The consumer response was so emphatic that sales rocketed up by 107%, cementing Old Spice as the number one body-wash for men. It is undeniable. The campaign achieved greatness.
Putting our issues about bottle water aside for a moment, we can look to Evian. The behemoth struck viral platinum in 2009 by injecting euphoric literalism into their brand tag line “Live Young” with that famous Evian Roller Babies commercial. It speedily became one of the most successful media campaigns in history. But did those 65 million+ views over two years lead to a revenue spike? Unfortunately I could find the stats, but an educated guess would be that the answer is yes, for two years after the Roller Babies launch, Evian decided it was worth their time to revitalise the campaign when they launched a “Let’s Baby Dance” campaign where consumers filmed themselves dancing while wearing a baby shirt. The result is the longest music video in history at over five and a half hours long.
I’m keeping my eyes open to see what impact the brilliant new ad for Coors Light in the UK does for sales of the product. So far it’s had almost half a million hits – which given it’s a UK-release is very strong. Jean Claude Van Damme’s pants are frozen and very tight. But the coldness he feels is nothing compared to the ice cold refreshment feeling of Coors Light.
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