Blog

There is no doubt that the brand of the week last week was Old Spice.  Following up on a fairly popular commercial campaign, the Old Spice Guy went social, You Tube, Twitter and Facebook style, by responding to people’s questions and comments with short, funny videos.  Lots of people, and companies, got involved asking questions.  Old Spice Guy even ended up mediating a wedding proposal.

The videos were funny, engaging and popular.  Many of the week’s top viewed videos on You Tube were Old Spice Guy responses.  It was a marketers dream come true.

Now that the Old Spice Guy has hung up his towel for a little bit, I think there are some key take homes for us as church communicators.

• Old Spice found a different way to use social media.  This format of taking a popular spokesman and moving him to You Tube where he interacted directly with customers in a funny, and sometimes random, way was brilliant.  They thought outside of the box a little bit and took a gamble.  Now other companies will try to copy it and it probably won’t work because it’s not as innovative anymore.

• Compelling and engaging communications will get people involved.  Interactive communication always wins.  If you look at who was tweeting to the Old Spice Guy it was a mix of corporations, celebrities and average people.  Most weren’t looking to push their product or agenda.  They just wanted to be involved.  If the church can be innovative communicators, can’t the same happen?

• It builds community now and for the future.  Undoubtedly Old Spice now has more subscribers on You Tube and followers on Twitter.  Not only have they built a community that feels some sort of connection and ownership in the company they also have a huge number of people they can reach with their next message.

• Old Spice went where the people already were and became a part of their everyday lives.  People actually wanted to share this with their friends.  The company embraced social media and realized communication, even if it’s marketing, has to be done differently in a social media world.  This campaign was fully integrated across several social media platforms.  This sort of buzz and interaction could never be done in a traditional media setting.  Churches can’t just ignore social media anymore.

• The idea was simple.  At its basic form, this was a question and answer situation.  Shouldn’t the church be able to do that?  Can’t we be a place where people come to ask questions and we can answer them?

Here's a good article with some additional thoughts.  How about you? What are your take aways from the Old Spice Guy campaign?