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Old Spice - old news

Matt Smith

by Matt Smith

27 Jul 05:50am

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Filed under: Advertising, Internet, Media, Old Spice, Society

25 comments

Look at your ad. Now look at mine. Now look at your ad. Now. Look. At. Mine. Sadly, this is not your ad. But what if your ad could look like this ad?

We all have fond memories of the Old Spice ad, don’t we? The Old Spice ad campaign ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ features former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa, in all his muscle-bound glory, telling the viewer that a real man would smell like Old Spice.

Appealing to both men and women, and now nominated for a Primetime Emmy, the ad has revitalized the brand, turning Old Spice from something your grandparents used to wear, to a smell for real men. But has it become old news already?

The downfall of the modern internet era is that anything that becomes popular can be, and will be recreated and parodied to the point of no return.

Rehash!

There are currently three Old Spice commercials which have been watched more than 25 million times on YouTube. Also take into account that not only does Mustafa have 90,000 followers on Twitter (where he tweets like the man your man could tweet like) but also an entire YouTube channel dedicated to new videos in response to questions sent to him.

In one case he even helps out with a wedding proposal.

Parody!

Don’t believe me? Look at YouTube. Now look back. What did you see? A plethora of Old Spice commercial parodies.

There’s everything on there that you could ever see and never wanted to see, which includes babies, overweight people, pale untanned people, and a sausage your sausage could taste like, all wearing a towel and all wearing thin. Which brings us to Tim Costello.

There’s nothing about Tim Costello wearing a towel that makes me want to support World Vision, nor is it done well enough to make me applaud him for giving it a go.

Obvious reading of cue-cards and tacky visual effects give it a hurried look, and I wonder if anyone under forty saw the clip before it was put online.

Summary!

The very nature of commercials is to sell us something, and it’s rare that one does it and yet keeps our attention time and time again.

The point is that a commercial has a limited shelf life, and perhaps the Old Spice commercial will be a victim of its own success. By being overdone it will lose its charm, and five months after its debut the damage could be done and it is destined to go the way of the Cadbury Gorilla.

Of course, there’s every chance that it is so undeniably manly that it’s bronzed carapace will never crack. Why don’t you tell me?

I’m writing a Punch article.

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25 comments

Show oldest | newest first

    • bella starkey says:

      09:14am | 27/07/10

      he’s a dream boat

      Reply

    • Tails says:

      09:14am | 27/07/10

      So true. Just ask Kevin07.

      Reply

    • Isaac says:

      09:19am | 27/07/10

      Heh the Old Spice commercial (not the lame homages) is just so full of awesome I don’t think it could age at all.  Everything about it is just so perfect from the language to the expressions on Mustafa’s face to the randomness of it all to the manliness of it just makes it soooo brilliant I’m worried that Old Spice may never be able to top it, in fact I’m afraid that no ad may never be this epically awesome again. 

      Every now and then an ad so rare comes along that defies convention and becomes timeless.  This is one such ad.

      Reply

    • David C says:

      10:17am | 27/07/10

      It doesnt matter because I have bought all the Old Spice ever made

      Reply

    • Zeta says:

      10:31am | 27/07/10

      There are so many great products they should be giving the Old Spice treatment to. Like Toohey’s Old. That’s one of the most manly products in the history of humankind. Because at any given pub, you might see a woman drinking one of those low carb Blonde lady beers, or a watery Mexican girly beer, or even one of those Japanese skirt beers - but you will never, as long as you live, meet a woman who drinks Toohey’s Old. It looks like carbonated year old bong water, but it tastes like the sweet tears of your enemies.

      But there is one man product above all that needs to be thrust back into the hive like man brain of male consumer consciousness - Wilkinson’s Sword razors.

      The ad writes itself - take any multi-bladed Gillette pube trimmer, and compare it to the masculine simplicity of the Wilkinson’s Sword. A black, ebony handle. No ergonomic bollocks, who worries about RSI while shaving anyway? And forget about your quad blade vibrating rubberised sex toy shavers. The Wilkinson’s Sword has an actual razor blade, which can double as a handy weapon in the right hands. The mechanism is made of metal, and has, wait for it, actual screws to hold fresh blades into place.

      And you’ll cut the shit out of yourself with it. Forget about having a smooth shave, you’re going to maul your face until it’s a bloody mess. Because that’s what your father did, and your father’s father and his father before him. Because that’s how real men shave.

      Any man who’s never drank Toohey’s Old, or shaved using a Wilkinson’s Sword, has no buisness calling himself a man.

      Reply

    • Matt Smith says:

      10:41am | 27/07/10

      That was great. I bow down to the master. smile

    • Bron says:

      01:05pm | 27/07/10

      Zeta-Friday nights about 6.30pm at the Stockton Boaties, come & introduce yourself. I am the woman drinking Toohey’s Old. Nothing starts a weekend better than “drinking the sweet tears of your enemies”...........I will take a pass on the Wilkinson Sword to do the legs though….......

    • James1 says:

      01:33pm | 27/07/10

      I often wonder if Zeta makes this stuff up in response to articles, or if he has these rants prepared and ready to fit into whatever the day’s topic is.

      Either way, you are truly a king amongst men, Zeta.

    • Chris says:

      09:12pm | 27/07/10

      Ahh the Wilkinson Sword. The first razor I used to scrape the bum-fluff off my spotty face as a young un. It was a hand-me-down from the old man and had already seen a few miles. Do they still make those or are they now considered weapons?
      Think I’ll pass on the Tooheys and stick with the Coopers Lunatic Soup.

    • DD Ball says:

      10:37am | 27/07/10

      I loved the advert the first time I saw it. The Tim Costello version makes me want to cringe. I like World Vision, but it has been misdirected under his leadership (and Frasers) and I don’t really want to smell like him. I know he isn’t offering that, but really, a good advert can be done badly. The sad thing is that it is a worthy cause that Tim Costello is sidelining because he is a political opponent of his brother. Peter left politics too soon, his brother stayed too long.

      Reply

    • Anne71 says:

      12:56pm | 27/07/10

      There’s a version of this ad on YouTube featuring a cartoon Tony Abbott - “the man your PM should be like” - http://bit.ly/9C7N0  They even played it at the end of Q & A last night.
      The original ad, though, is now one of my all time favourites. I haven’t seen anything so clever or original in nearly 40 years of television commercial watching wink  In the words of, I think, Lisa Simpson to Homer: “Of course we trust TV. It’s spent so much more time raising us than you have!” Says it all, really…

      Reply

    • Michelle says:

      01:33pm | 27/07/10

      Er, sales for Old Spice have actually dropped since this ad:

      “The Internet has fallen in love with Isaiah Mustafa, the hunky face of Old Spice body wash. His television commercials went viral, as did a two-day YouTube ambush of video replies to fans. Mustafa’s first ad even won the Film Grand Prix at Cannes.

      But buzz did not add up to sales, according to advertising news service WARC. Red Zone After Hours body wash sales have fallen seven percent, despite the ads. Yet BNET argues that Mustafa is such a media darling that nixing the campaign would be a PR disaster. So why are sales down?”

      http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/07/20/old-spices-viral-ads-got-attention-not-sales/

      Why are sales down? The answer is further down in the article: “Old Spice has long been associated with our grandfathers”. Which means the viewers were laughing at Old Spice, not with it. Old Spice shot themselves in the foot.

      Reply

    • Michelle says:

      08:49pm | 27/07/10

      Overall sales are up, but the product he was promoting is down. Looks like the jury is still out:

      “The bottom line: Mustafa and Wieden & Kennedy are clearly selling some body wash, but they may not be responsible for the bulk of Old Spice’s sales gain this year… How much of Old Spice’s recent gains–of that 106% bump measured by Symphony IRI in June, for example–come from Mustafa’s ads and how much from the coupons? “It’s impossible to know,” said P&G spokesman Mike Norton.”

      http://www.marketingmag.ca/english/news/marketer/article.jsp?content=20100726_145222_3512

      Time wil tell…

    • Craig says:

      01:48pm | 27/07/10

      The humour in the Video is very Pythonesque, you can almost hear him thinking “...and now for something completely different” between each scene.  Monty Python still rates highly with fans today, so Old Spice man will be around for a while yet - even if it’s just the quirky phrasing.

      I’m writing a Punch response
      ...with a pen
      ...now with a quill
      Now with a hammer and chisel because stone is just so much more manly than a feather.
      Look at the chiseled stone
      Now look at me
      Now look at the chiseled stone
      Now look at your man
      now look back ... at ... me.
      Your man would smell like he was chiseled if he wore old spice
      ...like me

      sorry .. the ad just lends itself so well to stream of consciousness typing.

      Reply

    • Young spice says:

      02:19pm | 27/07/10

      Abbott should make ad like this.
      “Look at me,now look at Julia Gillard and tell me what you see”

      Reply

    • Kallan says:

      02:20pm | 27/07/10

      I dont think the old spice ads will change the already formed opinions about the brand being a grandpa’s deodorant in the USA, but i think it’d be a genius move to bring the product to a different market such as Australia. We don’t know the history of the brand, (for the most part) and thus after seeing mr mustafa are utterly convinced we have to wear old spice to be manly. Me and my friends are thinking of importing some wink

      Reply

    • TheRealDave says:

      03:05pm | 27/07/10

      Since when? We’ve had Old Spice in this country for decades. My grandfather was wearing it back in the 70’s and I’m sure it goes back a lot longer than that.

    • bella starkey says:

      03:32pm | 27/07/10

      Go to a chemist. Old spice, blue stratos and brut are all they sell.

    • Nigel Catchlove says:

      03:59pm | 27/07/10

      If you’re going to embark on any business I suggest you understand the history of the market first. ‘Bring some to Australia’, give me a break, it was here in the 1970s when I first started to shave.

    • Zeta says:

      04:32pm | 27/07/10

      It’s still here. I don’t use it, I’m a Brut man myself, but will branch out to Old Spice if they’re out of Brut. I’m guessing you’re about 14 from the use of the winking smiley face, so gather around, yonder children, and let me market to thee the glory of Brut.

      The genius of Brut is that if you put it on in the morning, and do nothing but sit at a desk all day, you’ll get up and go to the pub in the evening smelling faintly of Brut, but mostly of musty, time-to-dryclean suit scent.

      But if for whatever reason you need to do any physical exertion - say terrorists storm your workplace in a Mumbai style attack and you need to build a defensive position out of work stations and defend your interns using the .44 you keep taped under the desk - then it’s like the Brut was never there. Wearing Brut is saying to the world ‘I don’t mind smelling nice, but when I don’t smell nice, I want the world to know about it.’

      Brut is so manly it actually accentuates the scent of body odour. It says ‘come here and smell my armpits, these are a man’s arm pits, and nothing will mask my pheremones from your feminine nostrils’.

      Nothing satisfies me more that coming home from work on the bus, and grabbing the hand holding device above me, unleashing my faded Brut scent to the world. I feel like it’s the human office drone’s equivalent of a dog pissing on a lamp post. When you board the bus, you can smell me, my Brut, and that vague, day old meat lover’s pizza smell of BO - it’s like I’m marking my territory. It’s my bus now.

      What seperates a true man product from it’s emasculated ‘eXtreme’ counter parts like Lynx, or those orange face masks made of caffeine, or vibrating lady shavers - is that true man products don’t really work that well.

      A Wilkinson’s Sword razor will give you a close shave - but so close it will actually cut you. Brut will make you smell ‘ok’, but won’t completely rid you of body odour. Toohey’s Old is a beer - but at 4.4 per cent, it’s practically a mid strength and you can drink dozens before feeling drunk.

      By using a true man product, you’re saying to world - ‘I don’t care for hygene or flashy marketing, which is why I don’t care that this deoderising body spray doesn’t function as intended.’

      That’s the definition of manliness - caring so little for personal hygene that you’d use a substandard product because it’s manly.

    • Georginorx says:

      02:50pm | 27/07/10

      SWAN DIVE


      So sorry, couldn’t help myself.
      The problem with Old Spice is the name Old Spice. I love the ad, I love the message, but the name tells me it smells like the back of my spice cupboard - stale, dingy, dry, and dirty. An Old Spice man is what a man would smell like if he was made of expired dried bay leaves. And that smells like nannas.
      On the other hand, I love this ad so much that I actually want to find a bottle and smell it. Maybe it will smell like a man that turns oysters into diamonds. Or at least maybe it will smell like a reasonable alternative to my man’s current manly bodywash (I think it’s Radox).

      Has anyone seen the “Perfect Italiano” cheese ads that were on during the Master Chef final though? They also had the gorgeous man selling point, and they were ridiculously funny (well to me at least) - check out the one where he practices his listening face.

      Sliverfish hand catch!

      Reply

    • aj says:

      04:22pm | 27/07/10

      The whole campaign was very clever, and definitely the best use of social media as a marketing tool that we’ve seen so far. Old Spice man is the new Chick Norris. Remember how long the Chuck Norris jokes stayed around? They’re still around to some degree.
      This is where Old Spice man and his exuberant manliness will go. I don’t think he’s fading out anywhere too soon.

      As for Tim Costello’s version, it’s brilliant! Of course it’s not going to be as professional, and of course it’s a bit awkward. Costello is not the hunk that Mustafa is. But the fact Tim Costello, head of World Vision and Christian Minister got into a bath robe and tried to impersonate the ad, i think is hilarious. Good on him.

      Reply

    • daily job news says:

      03:13am | 02/12/10

      Ear Rapidly,video ticket worry on equipment see situation near stuff as language steal additional mind sorry quick current hope every award fresh hide off fish upon busy pretty up start health beat revenue propose loan collect northern in pull village judge institute enough mistake side question already employment band unless visit committee over love pain find few pressure to straight offer then facility highly cat writing impose other scale flower no judge lead meeting finance author treat narrow care place eventually first silence security attitude usual soft music meanwhile

      Reply
 
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