There's been a slew of sales-impact discussion floating around about the Old Spice campaign the past few days, and there’s certainly a lot of items to wade through.

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)

My Crush

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)

Word travels pretty fast. I was sitting in an educational lunch session with speaker Shama Hyder Kabani today, author of The Zen of Social Media, when she mentioned a “small” change Facebook just made this week - until now, if someone created a Facebook PAGE, it was eternally connected to the personal profile of the person who created it. And while Facebook allowed the creation of additional administrators for a page, one could never remove that original page-creator administrator.

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)

Read Part 1 of this two-part series.

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)

Something to Think About

It seems to be inevitable. You’re in the midst of a group talking about best business practices in using Twitter, and someone asks “should I follow back everyone who follows me?”

While your core answers are naturally “yes” or “no,” the “why?” that supports each answer can vary as widely as the number of people you ask. (And that’s not even getting into the “sometimes, maybe, a percentage of them” options).

Following on Twitter

Early on in Twitter, the primary way to get followers was to follow someone first. Everyone was focused on what I’ll call the “Feed My Followers” phase. There was a higher level of conscience – you followed someone back simply because they followed you, in order to avoid the microscopic twinge of guilt that ensued if you didn’t.

And there wasn’t really a good way to monitor an account on an ongoing basis if you didn’t follow it – if you wanted to know what was going on, it was simpler to follow and have posts show up automatically in your feed, rather than manually search and bring the account up every time you wanted to know what was what.

But with the ballooning of Twitter we became less able to keep track of everyone we wanted to connect with in the Twitterverse, as our follows and followers became greater in number. You may have started just tweeting friends, and darned if you weren’t following a few hundred accounts before you knew it.

But then Twitter introduced lists in late 2009 – a way to categorize and surf entire groups of tweeters – without following a single one of them. A commitment-phobe’s dream, you can just set up a list. Heck, you can follow other’s lists. And this month, Mashable even launched a Twitter List Index where users can post their lists/list descriptions, so others can find and follow them with a click.

So stop and think a minute. One less reason to actively follow an individual account – one less reason to commit. Hold up!  For a brand, doesn’t this add even greater value to someone who is following you?

Chew on that thought for a bit, then read on for Part Two – Rationale for Following Back...

(Shaun Amanda Herrmann)