If you have not seen Old Spice guy commericals you must be living in a cave without Internet or TV. Since you are reading this post, I assume you have ventured out of your subterranean dwelling and I recommend watching a few of them for laughs.
The Old Spice guy and his commercials are prime example of something going viral on the Internet. The Old Spice guy has both a Facebook page and a Twitter account, but its not the fact that he has them it is the way he (and Old Spice) use them that has taken their popular Super Bowl Commercial which was hugely popular and taken it to another level that has people buzzing, interacting, and creating parodies.
Earlier this week Old Spice guy went on his Twitter page and Facebook page soliciting and answering questions via custom video (all while in a towel from his bathroom) from almost anybody who posted. Everything from, “If you went back in time how do you think a dinosaur would react to the manly scent of Old Spice?” to marriage proposals, and even a shout out to Andy Woodworth (@wawoodworth) about libraries. Wawoodworth Public Library. Frankly the Old Spice guy gets my admiration for just saying wawoodworth several times without tripping over his tongue.
You would think the wawoodworth Public library shout out is all that I have related to libraries and the Old Spice guy, but you would be wrong. Yesterday the librarian Twitterverse alerted me to a hilarious spoof of the Old Spice guy’s commercials by Harold B. Lee Library at Bringham Young University. In it “New Spice” guy asks “Do you want to be a scholar? Then study at the Harold B. Lee Library. Do your research here, study here, and be a scholar!”
Wow they knocked it out of the park, true to the original commercials with clothes flying off, walls falling down, and things dropping from the sky this was an extremely well done parody. I think if the Old Spice guy were still commenting via custom video he would say “Well done Harold B. Lee Library, well done.”
Buisness, advertising and social media pundits are all talking about how great a campaign this has been and how well Old Spice leveraged social media tools to get brand recognition and people talking about their product. Now we all can’t have the Old Spice marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy to come up with advertisements for us, nor do many of us have the creativity and the skills to do a great parody like Harold B. Lee Library. But there is something we can learn about this campaign. Check out the Huffington Post’s article, What Political Campaigns and Candidates Can Learn from the Old Spice Campaign, while it is intended for politics, librarians can learn a lot from it too.
It is not just about being on Twitter and Facebook, it is what you do with it.
*note thanks to Abigail who cleared up my confusion about wawoodworth. I have made edits in the above text to fix the error.
Thanks for the clarification, I messed that up. Still I think he gets points for not tripping over wawoodworth.
It’s not Wawoodworth Public Library– it’s Andy Woodworth at Burlington County Library System…