Old Spice – social media campaign of 2010?

Last night before I went to bed I noticed that a bespoke Old Spice advert to Kevin Rose (Digg’s founder) was rising fast in the ‘offbeat’ section of the Digg website. I hadn’t quite realised that it was one of over 100 YouTube videos that are part of an absolutely brilliant social media campaign by Old Spice.

You might recall the original Old Spice advert made by Wieden + Kennedy that aired during the Super Bowl many months ago, featuring Isaiah Mustafa, a former NFL athlete. It made the rounds on the Internet quite quickly and to date has clocked up almost 13 million views.

This week, Isaiah proves he’s more than just a great-smelling guy (on a horse) with fantastic abs by responding to YouTube comments, Tweets, Yahoo! Answers and blog posts about him and his brand new Old Spice commercial. (Source: Huffington Post)

And to ensure maximum coverage they’ve replied to the good and great of the Twitterati, like @ryanseacrest, @kevinrose, @Alyssa_Milano , @Biz and @guykawasaki. Blogger Perez Hilton‘ s video response has already clocked up 115K+ views. They’ve also hit up media outlets like GQ, Huffington Post, Gizmodo and @TheEllenShow. Starbucks have even managed to get in on the action.

It’s still early in the year, but I think we might have ‘the social media campaign’ of 2010.

Managing to bridge their ATL activity with one-to-one responses via social media is brilliant, but the fact that the responses are so consistently funny puts this over the top. Some of my favourite videos below.

Huffington Post