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Old Spice Continues to Entertain and Drive Social Media Buzz

I’ve been thinking about writing a post about the newest Old Spice Guy commercial for several days.  Yesterday, I found an article on Advertising Age about that newest commercial that includes some interesting statistics which support the post I was planning, so here goes my take on it.

The Old Spice Guy commercials have been very successful in making an old brand that many people associated with their grandfathers into a brand that younger generations are actually pausing to consider.  Both male and female audiences are talking about the Old Spice Guy commercials with the newest commercial (and my favorite so far) getting 3.4 million views on YouTube in the first week that it was released.  You can view it below.

One of the things that keeps the Old Spice Guy commercials alive is the company’s willingness to give up control of their content.  When an Old Spice Guy commercial is uploaded to YouTube, people use clips to create their own videos.  They talk about the commercials, share them, and make them their own.  That’s a brand manager’s dream come true.  However, giving up control of a brand isn’t something that most large companies are willing to do yet.  The Old Spice success is a perfect example of how the power of the social web can drive brand buzz, but unless a company is willing to lose control to a certain extent, that buzz potential is very limited.

It’s still unknown whether or not the Old Spice Guy commercials are actually driving sales, but those metrics are more important when it comes to tracking actual advertising performance.  When it comes to tracking social media marketing success, brand conversations and sharing are far more important and indicative of an initiative’s performance in terms of building brand value, creating brand advocates, and generating word-of-mouth marketing.

Based on the number of social web views of the most recent ad (previous ads each generated over 2 million views online within the first week after their releases), Old Spice is definitely benefiting from a strong social media buzz generated by the ads.  The question is whether or not the company can sustain that buzz, deliver on the brand’s promise, and meet consumer expectations for the brand again and again.  Only then will that buzz turn into long-term, sustainable growth for the brand and business.

What do you think?  Will the Old Spice Guy commercials have a long-term positive impact on the Old Spice brand and business?  Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Delivering Brand Experiences the Southwest Airlines Way

southwest airlinesSouthwest Airlines has been a leader in integrating social media into its corporate culture for years. The Nuts About Southwest blog achieved notoriety years ago as a great example of employees being given the opportunity to advocate a brand. As a result, Southwest Airlines developed a well-known reputation as the “anti-big” airline. The brand is fun and more approachable than larger competitors, and that brand image is carried through both internally and externally. Just spend some time on Southwest Airlines’ social media accounts and you’ll get a feel for the brand’s personality very quickly.

With that reputation in mind, it’s not surprising to find that a recent video of a Southwest Airlines flight attendant energizing the pre-flight safety announcement with humor was recorded and went viral. Consumers who were already familiar with the Southwest Airlines brand image felt more connected to the brand. It reflected the brand experience they’ve come to expect from Southwest Airlines. For consumers who were not familiar with the Southwest Airlines brand, the video introduced them to the airline’s unique brand personality by giving them a front row seat to the real Southwest Airlines brand experience.

You can watch the video below. After you watch it, ask yourself how closely your brand image and personality are integrated into your company culture? Is the integration strong enough that employees are able to and encouraged to live that brand personality and deliver the promise of the brand in every customer interaction and brand experience? Today, brands that leverage their employees as brand advocates are at a significant advantage in the competitive marketplace. However, you can’t simply tell employees what your brand personality, image, and promise are and expect them to support the brand and live the brand promise. They need to believe in the brand enough to want to advocate it just as consumers have to believe in the brand enough to want to buy it.

Give your employees a reason to believe in your brand by developing a corporate culture that delivers the 3 Es:

  • Educates them about the brand promise, image, and personality.
  • Encourages them to live the brand promise by integrating it into your corporate culture and code of ethics.
  • Enables them to advocate the brand through online and offline interactions.

Image: Aero Icarus

Apple Ranks as the Most Social Brand

social_mediaEach year, Virtue (a social media management company) creates a ranking of the most social brands by measuring online conversations about brands.  Whether those conversations offer positive or negative impressions of brands doesn’t matter.  Virtue’s methodology simply measures the online buzz about brands on social Web sites such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter regardless of the nature of the conversation.

The 2009 results of Virtue’s ranking of the most social brands is in, and Apple came out on top.  Apple is one of the most powerful relationship brands, so it’s not surprising that people talk about it across the social Web.  In fact, Apple’s iPhone brand took the ultimate top spot in the list of the most social brands, while Apple’s iTunes brand ranked 6th, and the Apple parent brand ranked 8th.  Interestingly, according to an article from Adweek, the only other companies to have multiple brands ranked in the top 20 of Virtue’s list were Sony (for both the parent brand and PlayStation) and Microsoft (for both the parent brand and Xbox).

While it’s important to remember that Virtue is not the only company to attempt to rank brands in terms of their online buzz and each company’s ultimate list is different from the next, it’s equally important to recognize the factors that are driving some brands toward the top of these lists.  For example, what makes the iPhone brand one that people like to talk about so much online?  One could argue that it’s connection to digital media gives it an upper-hand in terms of generating online conversation about the brand, but there’s more going on than a digital link.

Many of the top brands in Virtue’s ranking are entertainment and technology brands.  People like to talk about entertainment and technology, so it’s not surprising that these types of brands rank high.  What if your brand is not an entertainment or technology brand?  How do you compete?

The key is to not think of the social Web and your social media marketing strategy as a competition.  It’s a brand-building opportunity that can help you raise awareness of your brand and develop relationships with a broad audience, which can lead to brand trial and hopefully brand loyalty and advocacy.  Naturally, you need to be aware of what your competitors are doing in all areas of their marketing, including the social Web, but it’s most important to remember that one-size does not fit all when it comes to social media marketing.  In other words, don’t “market scared.”  Just because your competitors are pursuing a specific social media marketing tactic, doesn’t mean that tactic is right for you, your brand, your business, your products, or your customers.

Successful social media marketing comes from creating amazing content, building relationships, interacting with others, engaging them, and being human and personable.  You might not be able to compete with iPhone in terms of social brand rankings, but successful social media marketing is about quality (content, relationships, and so on), not quantity.

Your thoughts?

Image: Flickr

Facebook Lets Select Brands See Fans’ Likes

facebook likeIn another effort to lure brands to Facebook as a marketing tool, select brands can now see their fans’ other likes. So far, only big-budget, “priority accounts,” have been given access to this highly coveted data, and Tim Peterson of Adweek reports that agencies and their clients had to visit a Facebook office in order to get access to it. In other words, this is a feature that Facebook is still guarding closely.

Enabling brands to see the other pages, brands, television shows, bands, and so on that fans of their own Facebook Pages like is just one more useful component of behavioral targeting that brands want desperately. Using tools like Wisdom, Infinigraph, and Relevvant, brands can access some of this data already, and advertisers can use tools like SocialCode and Wildfire to make better decisions to drive maximum results. However, incorporating access to all of the data directly through Facebook will surely be popular among brands and advertisers.

Of course, the reaction from Facebook members might not be as positive, since Facebook is so often attacked for revealing too much private information about users to organizations that are willing to pay for it.

Social data is valuable, and Facebook is sitting on a massive amount of highly-personalized social data. Facebook knows this. It holds the power, and only time will tell if this new feature will expand to more brands in the future. The number of ways that brands can use this data to provide relevant offers to existing customers, meaningful offers to new customers, and co-sponsored offers to both audiences are vast, and creative brands will undoubtedly launch innovative and effective marketing initiatives using this data in the near future.

Think about how your brand could use data, which shows everything your brand’s Facebook fans like. Having access to that information would enable you to launch timelier offers and better targeted offers. Most importantly, this data could make a significant difference in generating positive marketing ROI.

What do you think?

Image: Denis Dervisevic