I could spend all day discovering http://www.agencynet.com. Seriously. Fly the helicopter. #sitesthatmakemedrool.

-Whitney



Initial sales figures that made the rounds indicated that sales for Old Spice Red Zone (it’s just one of the Old Spice products, and it’s one the product Old Spice man holds in one of his earlier TV spots) had dropped 7% over a 52-week period that ended June 13, 2010 (here's one of the related stories).

Now, many companies aren’t fond of publicly releasing comprehensive sales figures, but Old Spice parent company P&G has released supplemental/additional figures for the Old Spice product line (I have to wonder if this is in response to the great online buzz about the Old Spice campaign not being effective.).

From a July 25, 2010 article in Brandweek:

According to Nielsen, sales of Old Spice Body Wash—the line touted in the Wieden + Kennedy-created campaign—rose 11 percent over the past 12 months and since the effort broke in February, sales seem to be gaining momentum.

Over the past three months, sales jumped 55 percent and in the past month, they rose 107 percent, also per Nielsen.

REWIND that – the past month – sales rose 107 percent?

Also sourced in the same article, The New England Consulting Group shows sales increases, too:

Gary Stibel, CEO and founder of The New England Consulting Group, said his data also shows a lift for Old Spice. “We think that Old Spice is up. We don’t think it’s up in the double digits, but it’s up meaningfully, and we think it’s driven 100 percent by marketing.”

And from P&G, parent company for Old Spice:

P&G rep Michael Norton said he believed Nielsen’s numbers were conclusive. “Since the ‘Smell Like A Man, Man’ campaign broke in February, Old Spice has month-over-month strengthened its market position,” said Norton in an e-mail. He  added that Old Spice  is now the No. 1 brand of body wash and anti-perspirant/deodorant in both sales and volume with growth in the high single/double digits.

The newer sales figures, released by Old Spice, are popping up in several industry articles, including:

•  Adweek
• A second Brandweek article

Separating the sales impact of the viral campaign element from the TV spots is pretty much impossible on a definitive level, though certainly sales trending over the coming weeks will be under scrutiny (with the viral YouTube element breaking just this month).

And one can also argue that without a channel-dedicated, trackable offer, it’s hard to definitively connect specific sales results to specific marketing elements.

But, if accurate, these recent figures do seem to indicate an overall, positive sales impact from recent combined marketing efforts.

We’re going to have to allow more time to pass, and more month-to-month/year-to-year comparative sales data to be analyzed, for any final conclusions to be drawn, in even the most general scope, on the campaign’s success in terms of sales. And there are market factors to consider as well (such as if sales in the category increased overall, not just for the Old Spice brand). And understandably, some information may be proprietary to P&G.

But for now, in terms of sheer ENGAGEMENT, the campaign and its online viral/social components smell pretty darn good.

(I still have a social media crush on the Old Spice Guy)

(Shaun Amanda Herrmann)

Sometimes you run across an idea that’s so fun, so novel, so GREAT – you just wish you were the one that came up with it. Enter Wieden + Kennedy, the creative agency behind the fellow we simply call “The Old Spice Man.” In the midst of a second advertising campaign for Old Spice using actor Isaiah Mustafa, WK took the effort social in a YouTube video series that pretty much infected the Twitterstream the week of July 11 - not to mention the attention it also garnered on Facebook and YouTube.

The Particulars

Standing in a nondescript bathroom (somewhere in Portland, OR) and sporting a towel, the Old Spice Man responded to a wide variety of social media-fed inquiries and posts in a series of short videos that quickly became online conversation-fodder. In an interview with Mark Borden of Fast Company, Weiden’s global interactive creative director Iain Tait spoke about how they developed the online campaign:

“We knew it couldn’t be just responding to tweets in words, that wouldn’t have felt so special and had been done before. The fact that we were able to do this in video feels appropriate in relation to the prior TV ads.”

The Videos

According to AdAge.com, actor Mustafa delivered 186 video responses to both celebrities and everyday people. A few examples:

• George Stephanopoulos
• Ellen Degeneres 
• Mustafa’s own daughter

And there’s one I’m particularly fond of – one he did for a dog on Twitter. (I’ll admit bias on this one – he’s MY dog! But who can resist a BARKING Old Spice man?).

The Impact

Early reports don’t indicate a marked sales increase since the character’s launch in mid-February – quite the opposite, in fact.

I’d give it time. While these stats indicate a 7% sales decline, they don’t include any sales figures from retail giant WalMart, AND figures were only reported (so far) through June 13. The viral elements of the Old Spice campaign didn’t really take off til JULY 12: the @OldSpice Twitter account had just over 11k followers around 5pm EST on that Tuesday. The next day, same time? More than 65k. And at this writing? 93,748. Facebook? 704,415. And the YouTube views are TRULY impressive.

For now, it’s a wait-and-see game. As many can tell you – major brand shifts take time. The Old Spice brand had aged over the past several years, more staid than hip by any measure.

My dog and I (and certainly Old Spice parent company P&G, and Wieden & Kennedy) will be tuning in to see what future sales figures show.

Some of the coverage:

• Surprise interview with Mustafa at Local Portland TV Station
• American Marketing Association (article on the campaign)
• AdAge.com (article on the campaign)
• Mark Borden interview with Wieden & Kennedy

What's YOUR favorite video in the series?

(Shaun Amanda Herrmann)

• TV shows “jump the shark.”
• Brown is the new black.
• Scripted television is on its last limb.
• 50 is the new 40.
• The once magically futuristic compact music disk is one short breath from the grave.
• Print, as we all know, is dead (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)--especially that pound-and-a-half of colorful circulars that fall out of my newspaper every Sunday. Books continue to sell at a brisk pace, and the most robust newspapers and magazines continue to print millions of pages each month, despite some of their peers going dark. OK, so print isn’t dead.   

But what about logos—those brand signifiers that are the graphical representation of all that a brand encompasses? The design press of late has been laced with treatises from one or another expert suggesting that logo design will soon go the way of letterpressed ad layouts and rubber cement. Some say it already has.

Others have come to the defense of brand identity/logo design, highlighting its unquestionably significant role in the evolution of corporate communications, retail commerce and the larger culture in general, and the fact that, well, they’re still around and highly visible.

(A few brands have become so ubiquitous as to resort to experimenting with a rather bizarre form of stealthy “anti-branding" - like STARBUCKS)

While pretending to infallibly foresee the future beyond lunch tomorrow would be folly, the truth with brand identity as a distinct discipline surely lies somewhere between the extremes: Logos and logo design will remain a key—though perhaps gradually less significant—factor in the marketing communications mix for decades.

Understanding why requires a brief look at how we got where we are. Let’s state a couple of obvious things:

• The desire to use symbols—pictures, markings and later, letters—to express ourselves dates to the Pre-Hilfiger Caveman Days. (Caveman on Facebook, circa 400,000 B.C.: “Text me if U C meat. Peace out.”)
• Somewhere shortly after the Industrial Revolution, and most assuredly during the go-go days of post WWII America, the concision and wisdom of “brands” as it relates to sales and commerce became self-evident.
• Cavemen—or Ozzie and Harriet for that matter—didn’t have the Internet, 500 TV channels, and more than 40,000 new company names and product brands rolling into the marketplace every year. My understanding is they didn’t even have basic cable -

But we do.

The take-away: The relative gravitas of the basic logo and brand identity has gradually lessened with the onslaught of new media and innovative ways to support brands that have little to do with graphic identity in its narrowest sense. Will the next 10 years of change be as dramatic, or more so, as the last 30? If that question is answered affirmatively, the power of pure logo/brand identity as a discipline will probably be further diluted.

But will the logo die? Survey says: No.  

(Doug Cook)

Doug's Take:
A one-hour, prime-time special for a 26-year-old basketball player who’s never won a championship, instigated by “his people” for no other purpose but to announce the colors he’ll wear next season?

Really?

My initial response: the Old Guard NBA retirees should storm ESPN headquarters, forcibly wrest control and beam Bill Russell’s derisively puzzled image saying: “This is what it’s come to?,” followed by 59 minutes and 50 seconds of blank screen and a high-pitched tone.

(Full disclosure/disclaimer—playing hoops at a tiny private institution covered the cost of my college education, so ensuing opinions may be “envy-weighted”)

But wait, let’s remove our high-top Chuck Taylors momentarily (ecck, what’s that smell?) and consider a couple of sobering facts:

• Exhibit A: The U.S. population is roughly 300 million.
• Exhibit B: Some 300 million Chinese play basketball—that’s discounting the assuredly vast masses of non-playing Chinese who are avid fans.
• Exhibit C: Lebron James, with almost certainly six to eight years, (if not a full decade) left in his promising career, is as exciting as any player to walk on an NBA court. Given the right supporting cast, he can take the game to marketing heights the likes of which Jordan, Bird & Magic could have never envisioned.

© iStockphoto/Thinkstock

China—with its runaway middle class, relentless gentrification and urbanism—is what this is really all about.  Yao Ming is big, good and Chinese. But he’s injury prone—and he’s not Lebron. His limited success has only whetted the virtually insatiable “collective” appetite of our friends to the east.

Safe to say, the brand managers handling Brand Lebron slept restlessly last night, if at all--drifting in and out of a fever dream filled with the faint echo of a billion bouncing basketballs, wafting atop the steady “ch-ching” we all know to be international commerce.

(Doug Cook)

© Stephan Leavens

There was little I could do to have adequately prepared myself for the next three weeks. I found out that I was going to work on the opening of the Volkswagen Academy in Chattanooga. I was hit with deadlines that seemed way too tight. I discovered the beauty of proofreaders! I placed more phone calls in one day than I had made in my entire life. I was the low man on the totem pole, and I loved every second of it.

The best part of my internship was how much I learned from the experience. Hands down, this was the most important move of my career to date. Although my only graphics-related tasks were mainly related to updating and revising charts and graphs, I learned that I would love being a graphic designer in an agency like ND&P. Working for clients is a new realm of my career that I am beginning to gain firsthand experience in, and working on this project was quite the introduction to it.

My biggest fear as a graduating senior is if I will find a job, and when I find one, if it will be at a place where I will enjoy working. Working at ND&P convinced me that it is indeed possible to have your cake and eat it, too. 

(Caitlyn Mayers, ND&P Chattanooga Office Intern)

- Not really.

And I’m not talking about anything resembling the “two surgeons walk into a bar” type humor, either. But, as health care marketing has matured over the past, let’s say, 30 years, the avenues where humor might be considered have gradually expanded.

Of course, in that vast universe of non-health care marketing, humor has become almost as much a part of the landscape as jump-cuts, akimbo camera angles and speed-read disclaimers.

With health care, as one might expect, the further you remain from real threat to life—physician referral, walk-in urgent care, birthing, minor surgery, wellness—the less likely that humor will run you afoul of good taste, broad appeal and the mythical iron fists of church ladies everywhere.

The use of humor, tastefully, requires context—time to “set up” the situation, deliver the payoff and relate it directly to the product or service being touted. Kind of counter to “write short, cut quick and get the heck out of the way.”

It’s why award winning radio based on humor is, almost exclusively, 60 seconds long, rather than the more common conventional radio :30. (Rules and exceptions thereof notwithstanding, legalistically speaking.)

Generally, the rule-of-thumb remains: Advertising implicitly asks for time from a consumer’s busy life to listen. If a message gives us pause as potentially distasteful to a substantial portion of the community and its social mores, then probably better too dislodge tongue from cheek and find another voice.

(Doug Cook)

Fast forward five years and G n’ R is the biggest band on the planet and can pretty much do whatever they want, artistically. And what they wanted to do was an expensive and rambling ten-minute video for the song “Estranged.” Here’s the plot breakdown:

Black screen. Webster’s definition of the word “illusion.” SWAT teams and paramedics storm a house. Helicopters! Flashlights! There’s Axl, passed out. Cut to band in stadium. Band rocks crowd. Cut to Axl playing with kids. Sad supermodels watch band on TV. Axl turns into a ghost. Ghost Axl wears a Charles Manson t-shirt. Axl in fetal position in the shower. Cut to a hilltop mansion. Everyone is wearing white. More dictionary definitions. A life-size crucifix. A white stretch limo. Cut to an airstrip. A cargo plane. Dolphins swim around inside cargo plane. Sad supermodels watch dolphins. Dolphins swim up Sunset Boulevard, past the Roxy. Guitar solo—Slash seems to be hovering above the ground? Cut to an oil rig at sea. Axl jumps off the oil rig into the ocean. Axl refuses life preserver. More dolphins. Axl pets a dolphin. Second guitar solo; Slash rises up from the sea, walks on water. Another helicopter. A high-top sneaker sinks to the bottom of the sea. More Webster’s definitions. The sneaker says “Axl.” Cut to Axl sitting on a sofa…with a dolphin. Onscreen handwriting says “Lose your illusions. Love, Axl.” The End.

As a creative director, a big part of my job is helping people be more creative. But sometimes it’s about helping creative people know when to quit. Removing that one extra layer of copy or design that seems a little too clever, too flashy, too indulgent or is trying just a little too hard.

Somebody needs to be the one who says “Do we really need that second helicopter scene?” or “How many dolphins is too many?” or “Maybe, just maybe, a swan dive off an oil rig is gilding the lily.” In 1993, Axl could have used some boundaries. He could have used a creative director.

Then again, I’ve certainly done my share of lily-gilding and dolphin-hoarding as well. So maybe what Axl really needed was a client. Or a budget. Or maybe just a card in his pocket like the one advertising legend Bill Bernbach used to consult when clients gave him a reality check:

“THEY MIGHT BE RIGHT.”

The rockin’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbm6GXllBiw

The ridiculous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpmAY059TTY

(John Griessmayer)

Talk about a rock and a hard place for organizations and companies! If your marketing director created your company’s page, then later changed jobs – they would retain access to your company’s page, well, indefinitely. And if a partner or outside agency created your page, intending to hand over exclusive ongoing administration to you – oh, you’d be able to manage your page as a fellow admin, but the original creator would always be there.

So in a teeny little change that hasn’t gotten much public attention (yet!), Facebook now allows ANY page administrator to remove another administrator – INCLUDING the original page creator, as reported here on the “unofficial” Facebook resource site, www.allfacebook.com.

A Word of Caution

It’s important to understand that with current settings this opens the door for any page administrator to wantonly add and remove fellow admins – so take special care in granting administrator status to your brand’s page.

So How Do you Remove the Original Page Administrator?

Assuming you are one of the administrators for a page:

• Log into your Facebook Account
• Pull up the Facebook Page in question
• On the far left of the page, click “edit page”

• On the mid/right page column options, you’ll see “Admins” and the profile photos and names of everyone who has current administrator status, and in small type, immediately under each name the powerful little words “Remove Admin.”
• That’s it – click “Remove Admin” and you have successfully removed an administrator – even if that particular admin is the page’s original creator.

Now administration of Facebook pages can effectively be transferred, and remain under the control of their related brand/company/organization.

(Shaun Amanda Herrmann)

Rationale for Following Back

If your Twitter account is one you’d define as a BRAND –YES – follow back most/all of those who follow you. And you may find this true for your personal account(s) as well – here’s my WHY:

• When a brand follows someone back, it’s an action of recognition – you took the time to find me and follow me, and I noticed – I am following you back. You have value. One could argue that by not following back, a brand is being downright aloof.
• Engagement is a hallmark of social media. On the most basic level, following a consumer back opens the door for direct engagement. You can only send a direct message (DM) to someone on Twitter if they are following you. Your customers don’t have the option to DM you on Twitter if you’re not following them back – so you’re losing a channel of communication that goes straight to your consumer.
• For those loyal brand consumers out there, a follow-back is a subtle nudge to reinforce an existing relationship. For a “brand shopper,” it can be a checkmark in the “pro” column for you. Let’s say I follow two yogurt brands I like, and only one of them follows me back. True, I might not even notice, but if I do, it’s a checkmark.

There will always be exceptions – accounts you won’t/don’t want to follow back, like spam accounts, accounts which post prolific profanity or those which focus on activities your brand doesn’t support. (You can always add a disclaimer to your public description that following a Twitter account does not necessarily imply endorsement). And if you want to make sure users are really interested in having you follow them back, you can ask them to request it (that will mean more work for you – responding to all those public requests, rather than just regularly reviewing your followers and reciprocating).  Deciding who/how many you’ll follow/follow back is going to vary for your individual brand – so determine your own criteria.

Here are actual examples of brands on Twitter, and recent numbers – and while you can’t declare that a brand is following the exact same account list that is following THEM, this still gives you a good idea of how actively these brands are following others (these accounts have been “verified” by Twitter, which means their identify has been authenticated by Twitter – especially useful for a brand/celebrity where “fake” Twitter accounts may be prevalent)

Check out the difference between Coke and Pepsi – who appears to be validating/reinforcing their followers more? And while there’s a large gap between their following/follower numbers, at least Virgin America and Whole Foods appear to be following a substantial number of Twitter accounts. Now look at the account for late night talk show host Craig Ferguson. Does this appear to be an account that fosters direct engagement with its followers?

The bottom line for a brand on Twitter – when someone is interested enough to follow you, shouldn’t you be interested enough to follow them back?

(Shaun Amanda Herrmann)