Doo dah, doo doo, doo dah, dee dee

The marketing world is enthralled by "Old Spice Guy" these days, with countless articles, blog posts, and keynote addresses talking about how well the campaign is performing in both traditional and new media. So here's one more.

As a consumer, I like the ads and I think their efforts in addressing the social media space are fun and unique. As a marketer, I appreciate that they're successfully breaking through a very cluttered marketplace and are successfully repositioning a very old and tired brand.

However, most "successful" marketing efforts are either great at driving sales or in building positive brand metrics. One is a short term measurement, the other is long term. Rarely does a campaign succeed at both.

I was initially skeptical of the Old Spice campaign -- in fact, it seemed to be failing in both areas, despite its apparent awesomeness.
For one thing, initial sales figures weren't impressive.
Beyond this, I still see many comments from people saying "Fun ads, but Old Spice reminds me of my grandpa, so I'd never wear it."
And... quick: name the specific product being advertised in this campaign. A lot of people aren't sure.

Even some of the "best" campaigns in the history of advertising failed to achieve both.
"I'd like to buy the world a Coke"
"Tastes Great / Less Filling"
"It's Patrick! He took out life insurance! Good for you son! At my age it's probably too late..."

You probably recognize all three of the above phrases.
Here's the thing: The first two didn't actually achieve the great immediate sales results (the second actually helped its competitor more than the advertiser itself, apparently). But they helped establish some powerful brands for years to come.
The third example is one of those "Man, I hate that ad" spots. It's hardly endeared the advertised brand to the public. But it works. The horribly-written, terribly-acted TV commercial ran for years and years because it continually sold insurance.

One of the challenges as an outside observer is not knowing how many hits there are for every shot fired, so to speak.

Case Studies are great. I love to learn about what works and would much rather see a real world example than some academic, theoretical opinion. But we only get to see the best-of-the-best and the worst-of-the-worst when it comes to case studies. We'll surely see plenty more analysis of The Old Spice Guy campaign in years to come. The folks who created it will be the stars of the marketing industry conference circuit for at least a few more months.

But what about the brand's relative failures (or the ad agency's failures for other clients)?

Old Spice had a great (from an "entertained consumer" perspective) campaign featuring Bruce Campbell a few years ago. Very very very similar to the current ads (even including some cool online stuff, before the exact same activities were labeled as "social media"). But these didn't move the needle. They got some word-of-mouth, a few gazillion plays on YouTube, and so on, but never really caught on with the public. Clearly, based on the latest campaign, the strategy and creative direction is a good one for this brand, and yet it clearly isn't a formula for automatic success.

I'm fascinated by this "X Factor". Hollywood has shown us that it's almost impossible to predict which movies and TV shows will be a hit. Two almost identical shows will almost always have completely different results (and it's just as likely that the lower-budget, cheesier, dumber, less-marketed one will actually perform better). Same seems to go with marketing. The people behind Old Spice's resurgence probably had their fair share of unremarkable campaigns in the past, and will probably be hit-and-miss with their future efforts. If these people -- who seem to "get it" and have clients with deep pockets -- can't be consistently amazing, what hope do the rest of us have?

If any of my clients are reading this: big budgets help. It's pretty clear that the "Guy" campaign has a lot more financial support than the Bruce Campbell one did. It's almost always a good idea to spend more. The latest campaign is one of the very few examples of campaigns where it was worthwhile to advertise during the Super Bowl, for example.
But there are also countless examples of campaigns with big money, "star" creative teams and more, that have failed miserably.

Maybe it's a form of chaos theory. There are just so many variables when dealing with unpredictable things (like human beings) that the same actions will rarely generate the same results every time.