What every company can learn from the Old Spice campaign

How your grandpa’s aftershave made optimum use of modern marketing media

By now everyone has seen the Old Spice “Smell like a man, man” videos and has read The New York Times story about this creative, smart program. So what can PR pros, marketing execs, and companies of all sizes learn from this overwhelmingly successful campaign? Here’s a few of my thoughts.

1. You don’t always need a celebrity for a campaign. Sure, celebrities help (unless Mel Gibson is your spokesperson) get people’s attention and create awareness of your product, but not every company has the budget to enlist an A-list celeb. With Isaiah Mustafa, Old Spice used this former NFL Europe player as the face of its product. Why did this work? Because the idea was great and the company believed in it.

2. Use all your resources. From Twitter to YouTube to the Old Spice website, the company did everything it needed to promote the campaign. Bottom line, if a company only puts a small amount of effort into publicizing its campaign and doesn’t use all its available resources, it will never achieve the type of success it was hoping for.