Old Spice Inspires New Trust Between Agencies & Brands
Imagine this. Your agency comes in on a Monday morning and tells you they have a proposal. Hear them out. They want to produce 180 commercials over the course of two days. They’ll make the media placement with no discussion of CPP or CPM. They’ll write the scripts two minutes before going into production. You don’t get to approve anything. The storyboard is one frame. There’s no music. Barely a wardrobe.
And props will be picked up on the fly by interns dashing down the street to the closest CVS.
Now sign here.
Sound like the kind of campaign you’d ever approve?
Just running down the list of what must have transpired between Wieden+Kennedy and the Old Spice marketing team almost seems like an advertising fairy tale. For any of us working with clients in the real world, we can’t get a print ad approved without layers of review and no fewer than five revisions.
A TV commercial with a blank creative check? Dream on.
We’ll never be quite sure who had to promise a kidney or which executives had to be tied up in back rooms last Tuesday and Wednesday, but the Old Spice viral video campaign was incredible. And not just because of its pure strategic genius and the apparent invincibility of its lone acting talent. The campaign was ground-breaking because it showed clients the scary things that can happen when an agency has their trust, and permission to act in the client’s best interest:
Total videos made: 180+
Total video views: 5.9 million (first two days)
Total comments: 22,500
(via Mashable)
Now remember that this all came from a two-day shoot with a concurrent media schedule. A media schedule that basically consisted of a protracted Twitter feed and a YouTube channel. Both free. Both completely without followers, no links in, or no blog support. And of course, with no pre-assurance from Comscore.
But guess what?
TOUCHDOWN.
The Old Spice viral video campaign wasn’t just a win for Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy, or a permanent page in the record books. It opened a conversation between agencies and clients and created a precedent for stronger relationships and greater trust. Social media is doing more than bringing brands closer to the consumer. It’s also bringing brands closer to their agencies.
And despite initial reports that sales were down, a report from BrandWeek showed a body wash sales increase of 55% over the prior three months, and 107% during July. There have also reportedly been a total of 110 million views of the Old Spice videos since the campaign launch, an incredible number that puts traditional media to shame.
Why It Matters
Social media isn’t a medium where you can spend months in approval and weeks in post-production. Brands that want to lead the way in social media (or at least not get left behind) will have to keep their creative firepower close… building the kind of trust between agency and client that’s usually reserved for only members of an in-house team.
Join the Conversation…
Do you think more clients will start trusting their agency partners to be autonomous in social media?
Will clients that don’t trust their agencies have a competitive disadvantage?
Will new levels of trust result in a rise in engaging consumer experiences like Old Spice’s?
Great post Michelle, I didn't think about the campaign from this angle.
You have to believe that there will be increased trust between agencies and clients, but I bet there are also going to be a lot of rushed campaigns as well. A brand will seek similar success to Old Spice and simply “trust” their agency to make it happen. So is it trust that will be garnered, or control that will just be let go?
We know that Wieden+Kennedy will be trusted…by everyone…forever.
Bryan, you've touched on a whole other topic that bears mentioning. Thanks for bringing it up. Yes, there will be plenty of brands that realize they need to trust their agencies, and will unfortunately end up with failed campaigns and brand damage. It's a shame, but the same has happened in traditional campaigns.
Clients do need to start trusting their agencies if they want to be more competitive, but agencies need to earn (and deserve) that trust first. It comes down to having open conversations and making sure both sides are on the same page. This is unlike campaigns of old where the agency got a creative brief and came back a few weeks or a few months later with everything laid out. With increased trust should come increased communication and collaboration. The agencies and brands that leverage this should end up with really powerful relationships.
Interesting!
I think it’s also a case of mitigating risks, rather than blindly trusting.
The structure of these ads was pre-defined and had already been wildly successful, so the risk was quite low, as long as some common-sense parameters were pre-set.
And also, by doing so many little ads, there was also lower risk of failure: some would be very successful, some would not, but overall it would be a success. In that sense, we need to think less like an elephant and more like a dandelion:
http://danielgoodall.com/2010/01/07/the-dandelion-approach/