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After watching the “Best Commercials of 2009” segment recently on the Today Show, it’s clear that Old Spice has reached the pinnacle of its brand revitalization effort.
Created by Wieden + Kennedy, the standout spot seems to have helped Old Spice hit its new mainstream stride. Ever since Procter & Gamble bought the 72-year-old brand in 1990, it has been trying to shed its old-man appeal. Looks like it’s done that. What’s cool though, is over the past twenty years of reinvention the brand has maintained its core identity: the scent for real men. They’ve even cleverly played off of their history with this tremendously cheeky insight: “The original. If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.”
Old Spice’s transition was apparent three years ago as they started to branch out into over-the-top advertising with humor, 80’s references and unlikely pitchmen, such as Doogie Howser, M.D. (Neil Patrick Harris).
Old Spice has gradually reaffirmed its position as the hygiene products for manly men. Manly men like men of the sea — big hands, thick beards and an ever-present manly musk that Old Spice merely enhanced. Now they’re taking direct aim at men’s body sprays and the metrosexuals who use them (and the men who use their lady’s spray) with the tagline, “Smell like a man, man.” Brilliant.
The other campaigns they have in place, “Different Scents for Different Gents” and “Odor Blocker,” all worthy of viewing at OldSpice.com, are funny and on message, but none can match the mass popularity of the Super Bowl spot. It has cross-generational, cross-gender and cross-cultural appeal. It has created buzz and brought a whole new audience into the brand. It is a nearly perfect example of how old brand can become new again.
The net takeaway for us? A great reminder that making an old brand relevant again will not happen over night. But with persistence, patience, and an unwavering commitment to a brand’s core essence, it can happen.
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In the absence of any offline marketing support — no print, no TV, no event sponsorship, no direct mail, no new products, nothing outside of activity in the digital space — can a struggling or dead brand be brought back to life?
With all the communication pros piling on social media, it begs the question, especially for those of us in the brand-revitalization arena who are charged with finding the right media vehicles to turn a brand around.
It’s certainly been proven that companies that exist solely online can become phenomenally successful with little to no offline marketing. Google and Zappos are prime examples. But even Zappos took to the traditional airwaves a couple years ago when it bought into NBC’s “Apprentice” program. Was it losing market share? Had it hit a wall with its free delivery offer? Had new customer acquisition stalled? Or maybe it was just avarice. Whatever the reason, all of a sudden Zappos looked like a mature (and somewhat misguided) brand, not a young, agile, online innovator.
Mature brands looking for revitalization have a different set of challenges than online start ups. There are preconceived notions about the brand that may be hard to overcome with total reliance on digital.
Remember Bugle Boy jeans? Bugle Boy had a good run in the 80s before American boys’ tastes changed (thank God). Bugle Boy had business problems beyond bad fashion and kitsch advertising, but when it tried to resuscitate the brand it was stuck with those stigmas. It was a brand with no relevance. As much as it tried, its time had passed. Could a brand like that have had any hope of changing perceptions by updating its website and adding a Facebook page? Likely not. It needed bigger guns. Or did it? Maybe it just needed bigger ideas.
This leads back to something we seem to be losing sight of in the social media frenzy: the idea. The idea is king. Marketers must give people a reason to care. A reason to blog. A reason to share. You can’t push out an old idea or old products and expect people to want you again. You need to change. You need innovation, new products, new services, new stories. And, for most brands, that work starts offline. It starts in the brains of people who know how to use digital media, but truly understand the idea of the idea.
A couple decades ago, when multi-million dollar commercial productions were more the nor, it was easy to mask a bad idea. Or a non-existent one. Even then, it was the message, not the medium, that created the strongest brands.
That’s not to say there are not or will not be brands that have blazed back to glory with no offline support. We just don’t know of any. Let us know if you do.
