1. According to Visible Measures, “Old Spice Responses” — a.k.a the string of custom-made vids — is one of the fastest-growing
online video campaigns of all time. The company compares the endeavor to some of the most popular viral videos to date below,
and how they’ve grown over the course of 24 hours (to be fair, “Old Spice Responses” had a time limit attached, so there was more
urgency to participate with this particular string of videos than there was to get in on, say, the Susan Boyle craze).
Now let’s compare the numbers to Friday’s post.
2. The Return of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like kept getting hits and grew from 3MM views to 6.4MM views, and from 21k likes
to 33k likes. This video was autoplayed in the Youtube.com/OldSprice channel — destination where people were going to explore all
the new videos being posts, over 180 videos in two days.
Some numbers:
• Total videos uploaded: 183
• 12 July, 2010: 29 videos uploaded
• 13 July, 2010: 89 videos uploaded
• 14 July, 2010: 65 videos uploaded
• Combined viewing figures: 10,954,096
• Most watched video: 698,205 views
15 Most Popular Videos
Rank Video Name Views Date Uploaded Video #
1 Re: Perez Hilton | Old Spice 698,205 13-Jul-10 32
2 Re: Anonymous | Old Spice 505,594 13-Jul-10 39
3 Re: @kevinrose | Old Spice 382,867 12-Jul-10 16
4 Re: @kpereira | Old Spice 329,190 12-Jul-10 27
5 Re: rosemcgowan | Old Spice 338,502 13-Jul-10 118
6 Re: jsbeals | Old Spice 328,589 13-Jul-10 108
Re: @TheEllenShow | Old
7 292,440 12-Jul-10 1
Spice
8 Re: @Gizmodo | Old Spice 249,516 13-Jul-10 110
9 Re: Starbucks | Old Spice 215,258 13-Jul-10 113
10 Re: Alyssa_Milano | Old Spice 238,494 13-Jul-10 55
11 Re: Alyssa_Milano | Old Spice 211,589 13-Jul-10 88
12 Re: wheresweems | Old Spice 178,301 13-Jul-10 115
13 Re: pandarr | Old Spice 252,790 14-Jul-10 144
14 Re: themrchris0426 | Old Spice 164,662 13-Jul-10 117
15 Re: Laiba | Old Spice 167,090 13-Jul-10 3
What’s even more impressive, is that Old Spice has by far the most popular channel, and 8 out of the top 15 videos!
YouTube’s top Channels this week. OldSpice shows 13,500,000 views, almost tripling the 2nd best.
3. Top videos for today (July 16, 2010, just updated the post to add this): Old Spice with the number 1, 2, 4, and a total of 8 out of the
top 15 … now that’s impressive.
Now let’s look at Facebook:
Old Spice Facebook fans increased from 563k to 592k, so about a 29k bump since the launch of the social campaign.
Referring Site Click(s)
www.youtube.com 9,585
www.oldspice.com 968
Email Clients, IM, AIR Apps, and
537
Direct
www.swaggerizeme.com 2
3.hidemyass.com 1
bit.ly 1
oldspicemobile.com 1
translate.googleusercontent.com 1
4. Referring Site Click(s)
www.facebook.com 1
www.oldspice.com 1
Bit.ly link tracking from the YouTube channel header tracked 10k Facebook referrals from YouTube, compare to 1k last week.
Old Spice Twitter followers increased from 8k to 66k in 2 days.
Conclusion:
So, 58k new Twitter followers, 29k new Facebook fans, 6.4MM views of the campaign video + 5MM views of all responses in 48h.
Amazing campaign by W+K, simplicity = power. They carefully chose social influences that will promote their personalized viral
video, and the true power was speed, amazing copywriting, and a great actor… hats off, I was truly impressed.
How do you get bloggers, fans and random Internet folks to make your campaign go viral? Namecheck them in a
personalized monologue delivered by a shirtless man, of course! That’s right, everyone’s favorite topless dude, Old Spice
Guy Isaiah Mustafa, has been tweeting just-for-you-vids to a bevy of Internet folk all day.
The Old Spice Guy is undoubtedly one of the most beloved commercial characters in recent memory — he’s like The
Most Interesting Man in the World, but young and apparently unable to stay fully clothed. He burst on the scene back in
Februaryand his videos quickly went viral on YouTube .
Well now he’s apparently taking awesomeness to a new level — or the ad execs behind his campaign are, rather. He
seems to have heralded the deluge of vids with a tweet:
He then proceeded to send out vids via Twitter to bloggers who have written about him in the past, YouTube
commenters, random folks asking random questions on Yahoo Answers, and various and sundry people who have
tweeted at him today. He’s working pretty fast, too. After posting a call for questions on Reddit four hours ago, he
responded to a cadre of questions rather rapidly. (In other news, his abs must be ti-red.)
This campaign really is a perfect storm of viralty — not only does it target specific bloggers (who are then more likely to
cover the whole thing), it also reaches out to less prominent individuals who can be made more aware of Old Spice.
Moreover, they become personally invested in the brand because they have actually become a part of the world it has
created. We’re not sure if this marathon of videos will lead to more Old Spice products sold — but it definitely creates a
brand identity that people will be interested and excited to engage with.
5. We’re embedding the Old Spice guy’s personal message to Perez Hilton below — Hilton wrote about a new spot at the
end of June. (FYI, we also tweeted at the shirtless wonder, so we’ll update you if he deigns to make us a vid.)
NB: Commenter Liz Pullen also points out that “Old Spice” is a Promoted Trending Topic today. Very clever…