How to Beat Old Spice -- the Best-Selling, Best-Smelling Brand Around
November 1, 2010 by Nate Winter
Now that Isaiah Mustafa fever has cooled to a simmer and Old Spice's attempts to follow up with a new spokesman have faltered, the men's personal care market is ripe for a new brand to capture our attention and take our moistening arm pits in a fresh new direction. So who's it gonna be?
AXE threw its hat into the ring in Canada with this billboard:
Does AXE make an interesting, quasi-logical point here? Kinda. Does the ad shine through as a pathetically futile jab from an envious competitor attempting to piggyback on Old Spice’s breakout success? Big time.
A word of advice to AXE: Don't publicly bad mouth your competitor in an ad. It just comes across as sour grapes, which no one is interested in. Accept that Old Spice beat you fair and square, and move on. The "Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign was unique, on-strategy, hilarious and wildly successful. And there's nothing any competitor can say or do to change that.
That's right, I said "on-strategy." This is the dirty little secret behind all the hilarity. Old Spice did research and built the campaign around the results. The research revealed that a lot of guys don't buy their own personal care products-- they just use whatever is available, hence the campaign's suggestion that guys should quit using lady-scented body wash. The research also revealed that a lot of women buy personal care products for their men-- hence the way Mustafa explicitly addresses women in the ad with a lady-friendly message. But the ads ultimately appeal to guys as well.
So, AXE, if/when you have something original and entertaining to share, please do so. Until then, keep your whining to yourself.
You can't undercut Old Spice like AXE tried to, but is it possible to outdo Old Spice in a battle of oddball humor? What if you squeezed MMA fighter Chuck Liddell into a super small purple t-shirt of four wolves howling at the moon while he rides a sharktopus? And the sharktopus is also wearing a skin-tight wolf pack t-shirt?
Or maybe picture Entourage actor Adrien Grenier shotgunning a can of soda and then crunching the can flat against his pretty-boy forehead, grabbing 100-lb. dumbbells for some curls and showing off his uber-powerful, skinny-guy guns.
Or show Frylock from Aqua Teen Hunger Force grooming his beard with Old Spice products. Then Family Guy’s Peter Griffin shows up and fist fights a giant chicken for 20 minutes over a bottle of Old Spice body wash.
This type of thinking, while not exactly original, at least keeps the tone positive and focused on entertaining the customer.
What do you think? Is it possible to beat Old Spice? If so, how? Enter your responses as comments below.
