The Old Spice Takeaway

Social media gurus and detractors were out in force this week to discuss the recent results of the Old Spice campaign, both claiming the other failed. Unfortunately, no one bothered to establish what success in this instance would look like, making any discussion of the results difficult. Let’s find out why.

A lot of people were hoping for a clear victory that would validate social media as an advertising and promotional medium for years to come. Agencies have a hard time selling clients on unproven methods and a strong set of data from this campaign would go a long way in future pitch meetings. Procter and Gamble can’t have been easy to win over from the start. It is a radical strategy in entirely untested waters.

The numbers
Depending on who you ask the 52-week numbers for Old Spice are not strong, but were lower before the new campaign. Sales volume is up, but only in direct combination with recession-fueled buy-one get-one-free coupons. Single-variable correlation (change one thing and watch how a system behaves) is the only safe way to test a theory. We don’t have that luxury here. If P&G (or W+K for that matter) really wanted to know if the social campaign made a difference to sales, they would not have combined them with other promotions. This time around, it may not be in either of their best interest.

Who’s winning?
Wieden and Kennedy (at least in public). Everyone in the industry loves the campaign; it will win awards and W+K has cemented their role as a leader in social advertising. The agency’s long-term relationship with their client may depend on future sales numbers (and can’t be helped by the fact that people laud the campaign and trash the product). If W+K made a mistake (and we can’t be sure yet if they did) it was mismatching a cutting-edge campaign with the wrong product.

Does P&G have a choice?
Right now it doesn’t even matter if the ads work. P&G is the face of new digital. If they make any public sign of a lack of confidence, it will be front-page news in the industry. At least people are talking about the product. If nothing else Old Spice has gained a tremendous amount of mindshare online in recent weeks. I can’t speak for anyone else, the only point of agreement in all the conversations I’ve heard has been that no one likes the product. For a company known for household products that span generations, maybe the appearance of innovation has value in itself.

What about the customers?
The Old Spice campaign brought a radical new approach to branding online. The Old Spice product itself however is perceived as neither radical nor new. Lots more people (not clear if they are customers) are checking out the Old Spice and P&G presences online. There is plenty of traffic to YouTube and Twitter accounts and with the help of massive discounts, product is leaving the shelves. What is not so clear is the relationship between those figures and how it will play out long term. Maybe W+K has attracted a whole new set of consumers to a product most of us associate with our grandparents. But there are other possibilities.

My personal theory
No one argues the campaign is drawing a lot of attention and traffic to Old Spice, P&G, and W+K. Maybe some younger ad-savvy consumers turned on by the campaign are taking advantage of great discounts to try the product. I can’t help but think there will be a cultural disconnect when they start using it. As someone said to me on Twitter “[E]ven great ads can’t make that crap smell good – eventually the truth will out.” The bigger question to me is whether the old customers will stick with a brand that may not reflect their core values. If they wanted in-your-face ads, wouldn’t they be buying Axe?

What really matters?
W+K will get more big-brand clients looking to rebrand for social media. P&G will not be pigeon-holed as an aging company disconnected from a younger generation. Old Spice may or may not have long-term success in the marketplace. The investment paid off big time for w+K and P&G. The gurus and social media haters hoping for instant validation about the value and efficacy of social will have to wait. This fight has a few rounds to go.

Where’s the data? Industry spectators hoped for a clear turnout immediately. I argue that was never possible for several reasons. W+K and P&G did not have an interest in generating let alone sharing good data. W+K wants to sell more clients on social media. P&G wants to stay ahead of the curve and show investors they can remain relevant despite low sales across the board. This pair of titans combined a new style of campaign with tremendous price reductions to keep product moving no matter what the actual effect of the advertisements. Worst case scenario, they both tried and neither AdWeek or P&G shareholders can perform a detailed postmortem. Success without a single clear cause is still success in the eyes of anyone collecting a dividend. Unfortunately for everyone this strategy makes extracting any useful data from this mess nearly impossible. Now every agency and brand will have to try similar approaches on their own dime to test results. If they all hedge their bets in the same way it may be a long time before we know the cold hard truth about how and if social advertising really works.