the art of repetition & recombinance
August 6th, 2010 • posts i've written
By now, we all know what a giant success the recent Old Spice work has been. Yes, Virginia, it’s even moved product – culminating with a 107% sales increase in June.
Nicely done, W+K.
As ad folk (and as humans), we tend to have short memories. We’re good at remembering spectacular hits and not much else. With that said, it’s easy to forget just how long Old Spice has been experimenting with many of the artistic devices people talked so much about when it came to the new spots.
Centaur, uploaded over 2 years ago
Charismatic male spokesman, mid-shower. Pay special attention to the rhythm and pacing that the spots have in common.
Bruce Campbell, uploaded over 3 years ago
Watch the background – notice the sailboat? the infinite loop? You can see how they’re experimenting with visual effects, here in the background, while the charismatic male spokesman tantalizes you with his well written and well delivered dialogue.
NPH, uploaded over 2 years ago
When in doubt, call in the celebrity. Again, though, same pacing, same interesting-ness playing out in the background.
I’m a Man, uploaded Aug 2009
Look familiar? The amazing quick change effects, pacing, clever dialog, charismatic male … but only 124k views to date.
I’ve just chosen just a few of their past commercials, but there are many more out there to help fill in the evolution. Perhaps even more deserving than the current success of ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,’ W+K deserves credit for keeping their client committed to this creative vision for such a long time, enabling them to continually adapt, refine, and improve how the basic components work together.
It’s hard to not compare cultural success to winning at the slots. Here, a set of basic ingredients interchanged repeatedly until one lucky turn – when the right combination of elements in the right order yielded a fortune. It’s hard to tell how much luck played a part, versus a strong ear for cultural relevance. W+K would have to answer that one. But it does seem that a commitment to repetition and recombinance can ultimately pay off if you stick to it long enough (and if you’re damn good).
You can see how the brand and agency were employing a sort of Chinese Water Torture method of breaking into cultural exchange over the last few years. Yet, if you ask most people, before the recent spots Old Spice was only known as your grandfather’s brand. The Old Spice body of work seems to whisper the notion that you should continually iterate/evolve a concept not to build up cultural momentum (because maybe that’s not how culture works), but instead to work towards finding that right combination that will yield a sort of Black Swan event in culture.
Should this change the way we present creative concepts to clients?
If you’re trying to sell your client on moving forward with new work, it seems as though you’d want to convince them to allow you to iterate and evolve the work as quickly as possible, ostensibly for as long as it takes to stumble onto something culturally remarkable – and once you find that lucky combination, mine it for all its cultural worth in a rapid and responsive way. Perhaps we should stop pitching fully fleshed TV scripts at all – and instead talk about the building blocks of our creative vision and how they might adapt over time.
Anyone up for pitching that to a client?
It might sound something like, “Give us three years to juggle these creative building blocks and then it’ll REALLY work out for the brand.”
Some things to ponder about The Man Your Man Could Smell Like that set it apart:
- The campaign launched with a Superbowl spot – and this year’s Superbowl was the most watched live TV program of all time
- Isaiah Mustafa – plenty of commercials become popular and you never see the star again, there’s definitely something special about him (and it helps that he was an unknown, it gave us all something to be curious about)
- Social media – the technology has definitely come of age since the first iterations posted here, not even counting the recent real-time responsiveness by the brand these spots were certainly benefited by people choosing to spread them via twitter, facebook, and the like
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10 Responses (add your comment)
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2 additions:
* Are you sure the debut of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like was a Super Bowl ad? I remember it debuting during February but not being a Super Bowl buy. I remember it debuted online then moved to TV.
* Can you elaborate a little on “not to build up cultural momentum (because maybe that’s not how culture works)”? Seems to me that a number of example suggest cultural relevance is based on momentum and breakthroughs. From YouTube algorithms, to audience building to internal creative chops, the momentum is what allowed the snowball to grow — it had to start with a roll.
Thanks!
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James has made a great point. TMYMCSL was not a Super Bowl ad, but you’ll have to dig a little to see how a genius Media team executed a buy to make it seem so.
And, there are many salient points in the post. Agreed that long-term Brand strategy and repetitive messaging is necessary to change the mindset of the general populous, although TMYMCSL was a Brand persona that evolved more recently and came about in response to a specific condition that was beginning to stir in the Male Grooming category. Bonus points to those that can actually find the case study floating around on the Interwebs right now.
A warm thanks to Bud, for not only focusing on the Integrated strategy behind a viral success, but also for using the tools (meaning the Social net) to find me to make this comment; from the horse so to speak.
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@evilspinmeister,
Greatly appreciate your time, thoughtfulness, and willingness to jump in and provide some feedback. Awesome.
That clever media buy worked on me. I have some recollection of the buy not taking place directly during the Superbowl, but it seems to be a pretty repeated mistake (that I made, too). Well done, media team.
Per your comment, and @James’, I mean that my sense is that the ad worked because it was in the right place, at the right time, with the right creative combination. Not because we’d all seen and recalled 15 past spots and finally decided, “I’m sold.” To @James’ point, momentum happened on the creative side, the team obviously had time to experiment and refine. The one-take epic-ness of TMYMCSL came from the work put into all the previous spots.
And the point I’m getting at, I suppose, is that we still need lots of exposure to culture in the form of media buys, but not to build up awareness, instead to experiment/iterate the creative for the chance that it will break through.
So maybe we should stop blanketing media w/ the same spot. And with that, we should start making a dozen variations instead of 2-5. Maybe at best, clients will see some tiny uptick in sales due to blasting people w/ the same ad over and over – but they won’t see Old Spice type of figures unless they keep pulling the slot machine arm, switching up the creative elements, and exposing it to culture.
That all sounds pretty reasonable, having typed it.
Last question – do you really think the spot did so well because men and women out there were catching on that men were using their girlfriend’s flowery smelling body wash? I think you’re not giving the creative the credit here – as much as I’d love to credit a planner or strat w/ that insight, my gut says that it was window dressing to the remarkable creative work.
Thanks again!
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Ross McLean August 7, 2010at 3:39 am
Interesting conversation. Here’s my 2 cents.
I agree that TMYMCSL is successful mostly because it’s a genius bit of creative, very well placed and supported by some breakthrough social media thinking.
But, in answer to your “last question” above I do think you’re underestimating the contribution strategy and insight probably made to get to an idea that resonates so strongly.
A good planner/strategist/creative knows that it’s not good enough to just talk about the product in a brief/strategy. It’s only when you can weave what the product does together with a bit of meaningful human truth that you’re giving creatives a chance to do powerful work.
For the centaur spot it looks like the creatives probably got “it’s soap and moisturizer, two things in one.” All product, no truth. Lucky the work is as good as it is when the creatives get that little.
For the other spots, it seems like the creatives got something like “prescription strength without a prescription” and “lots of varieties for lots of different types of men.” All product, no real truth to tackle. And the work shows it.
For TMYMCSL, the creatives either got to or got given a behavior “guys use their girlfriends’ body wash because they like the product but feel that bodywash is too girlie to buy for themselves” turned into an interesting truth like “girls want guys who smell like men, not like their girlfriends.”
Big difference.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s a ton of other stuff probably driving this success as well, but starting with a truth and an actual insight is a huge deal.
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I keep sending the link to this article to people because it’s the most amazing part of the whole campaign for me.
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Thanks Bud for taking the time to compile this.
While I do think the evolution and tweeking of the concept and creation is a very important part of this, I also believe that building the (pop-)cultural momentum is in fact a part of the success of Old Spice recently – as well as the spread of TMYMCSL. While I don’t have it all quie sorted out from a theoretic perspective it might have something to do both with critical mass of Old Spice users and the “spiral of silence” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence)
that was around Old Spice before, when it was old and uncool.What I mean by this is that Old Spice has actually been quite successful in their brand renaissance before TMYMCSL. If you look at their Effie cases from 2008 and 2009 (http://bit.ly/aiHOQK, http://bit.ly/9iXKmi, http://bit.ly/cTTVlw) you can see that the Old Spice renewal was in full swing when TMYMCSL was launched and one could indeed speak of a “layed ground” in terms of the context. Not in the way where people consciously think of the last 14 pieces of film they’ve seen before but in a more subtle way.
There’s a great post and discussion with a comment from W+K’s lead planner on the brand here that also briefly deals with the topic: http://robcampbell.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/why-old-spice-is-the-best-bit-of-planning-this-year/#comment-46790
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I agree that for something to be culturally remarkable it has to be perfected and evolve through time and have the ability to react in a quick & significant manner encouraging spread/cultural relevance.