New Life for Old Spice

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1 2009 Bronze Effie Winner New Life for Old Spice Category: Renaissance Brand/Client: Old Spice / Proctor & Gamble Primary Agency: Wieden+Kennedy Strategic Challenge Created by the Shulton Company in 1937, Old Spice gained popularity during World War II and has been an icon in men s grooming ever since. In 1990, Procter & Gamble purchased the brand, seeking to extend its equity in aftershaves and colognes into the world of deodorants. Thanks to P&G s marketing muscle and the brand s famous performance guarantee (1-800-PROVE-IT), Old Spice became the top-selling men s deodorant by the mid-1990s. Fast-forward to With Old Spice still on top, the landscape changed dramatically with the launch of Unilever s Axe in North America. In a world previously dominated by product performance claims and side-by-side comparisons, Axe shook up the category with its promise of sexual conquest. Young guys took notice, and sales skyrocketed. While Old Spice sales remained strong, the brand s share in the category began to deteriorate at the hands of the young challenger. Fueled by the success of body spray (a new form to American guys), Axe was beginning to flex its muscle beyond its fragrance-in-a-can, eating into Old Spice s advantage in its core business of deodorants and antiperspirants. And in 2006 an Advertising Age cover story declared Axe the category leader, dethroning Old Spice after just four short years. Not good.

2 Just as worrisome, however, was the emotional connection Axe had forged with young guys (13-24), the lifeblood of the category. With their simple but alluring get the girls message, Axe was capturing the hearts and minds of this key demographic. While brand metrics for Axe were skyrocketing, those for Old Spice were flat to down. Qualitative research with the target confirmed the unfortunate situation: Axe was sexy, modern and cool; Old Spice, meanwhile, was well old. Our core communications challenge for Old Spice was a matter of relevance. How could this aging, iconic brand reconnect with young dudes? Objectives Specifically, we wanted to accomplish the following: Improve Key Brand Measures among 13- to 24-year-old guys, especially Brand Momentum, Brand Relevance and Brand Perception Continue to grow sales and share; specifically, P&G wanted to retake the lead in share of dollars, a daunting task given Axe s momentum in the category The Big Idea To champion the brand s experience and to position Old Spice as a big brother who doesn t take himself too seriously. This was a learning process, not a eureka moment or a gift from above. From the start we knew that we wanted to make Old Spice an icon of modern masculinity. But doing so presented some serious problems. On one hand, young guys were telling us that they loved the brand s heritage. At the same time, they were telling us to update the brand by dropping Old from Old Spice and to relaunch as New Spice or Spice. How could we modernize the brand without jeopardizing its authenticity? We discussed the advantage to being old through the lens of our target. In the end, we realized that young guys desired something that Old Spice has in spades: EXPERIENCE. Old Spice had decades of masculine knowledge at its disposal, wisdom it could share with a new generation of guys. We liked this idea because it allowed us to celebrate the brand s heritage; plus, it clearly set Old Spice apart from the competition, separating the men (Old Spice) from the boys (Axe), who had no experience whatsoever. Best of all, it took a perceived negative and turned it into a positive, reframing old into a relevant and compelling point-of-difference for the brand.

3 Bringing the Idea to Life Our first step was to recapture the brand s most iconic assets. We replaced the racing yacht logo with the iconic clipper ship and script elements that were soon integrated into packaging. In TV we also brought back the classic sailor s whistle, perhaps Old Spice s most famous and distinctive branding device. In January 2007 we relaunched the brand with our Experience Is Everything campaign. TV featured cult icon Bruce Campbell while print utilized iconic imagery and unabashedly celebrated the brand s heritage grandfathers and all. For the web we developed The Old Spice Experience Test, a quiz that allowed guys to gauge and share their knowledge of manly things. For product work (the more recent executions which are featured on the creative reel), experience became less of an explicit message and more of a tone of voice. Old Spice, we decided, was the experienced big brother who didn t take himself too seriously. This older brother personality further differentiated us from the sex-obsessed Axe and allowed us to start explaining product benefits in our target s own language, to go beyond typical packaged-goods speak and to generally have a bit more fun in everything that we did. Humor and irony became key creative assets for this previously earnest brand, and we found great success in poking fun at category conventions (many of which P&G themselves perfected). One deodorant ad featured a side-by-side comparison, touting Old Spice s ability to help guys grow chest hair. Another campaign featured a softball player celebrating Old Spice s superior odor protection in an extended slide around the bases. A campaign for Hair & Body Wash poked fun at pharmaceutical ads, with a montage of hairy and not-so-hairy guys asking if the product was right for them. We also employed celebrity pitchmen to help us bring product benefits to life. Will Ferrell became a sweat scientist to pitch prescription-strength antiperspirant, a product that Neil Patrick Harris (a former TV doctor) also endorsed. Meanwhile, we enlisted Brian Urlacher of the Chicago Bears and rapper LL Cool J to help us launch Swagger, a new scent that allowed for dramatic transformations from nerd to stud. Put it all together and you end up with a body of work that has rejuvenated the brand and introduced an entire new generation of guys to Old Spice.

4 Communications Touch Points TV Spots Branded Content Sponsorship Product placement Radio Spots Merchandising Program/content Print Trade/Professional Newspaper Consumer Magazine Print partnership Direct Mail PR Events Packaging Product Design Cinema Interactive Online Ads Web site Viral video Video skins/bugs Social Networking sites Podcasts Gaming Mobile Phone Other OOH Airport Transit Billboard Place Based Other Trade Shows Sponsorship Retail Experience POP Video In-Store Merchandizing Sales Promotion Retailtainment Guerrilla Street Teams Tagging Wraps Buzz Marketing Ambient Media Sampling/Trial Consumer Involvement WOM Consumer Generated Viral Other Additional Marketing Components: None Reach: National

5 Results We have a host of metrics to illustrate the effectiveness of our work: Key Brand Measures. Since December 2006, key brand attributes among 13 to 24-year-old guys have improved dramatically (Source: IPSOS ). Brand Momentum is up +10% Brand Relevance ( is a brand for someone like me ) is up +10% Brand Perception ( is a cool brand ) is up +12% Sales/Share Success. Old Spice has definitively regained the leadership position in the category while Axe s share of dollars has decreased since the end of In terms of volume share, Axe s momentum has softened, while Old Spice has only increased its lead. [Sales/volume data has been removed for confidentiality reasons.] Becoming a Part of Pop Culture In addition to the hard data, there s also a mountain of anecdotal evidence to support the brand s success with young guys. YouTube hits for Old Spice commercials far exceed those for any other brand in the category and countless parodies of our work can be found online. Anything else going on that might have helped drive results? N/A