Hello ladies, how are you?

Well, It’s official. The Old Spice Viral Campaign by Weiden Kennedy actually drove sales down. The drop was an immediate 7 percent according to Warc, an industry research group.

The reasons are obvious if you were raised on off the teet of the web (oft called net-natives). The web user culture is totally different from the newspaper reader culture of yester-year. Weiden + Kennedy was culturally out of touch. Ironically, if David Ogilvy was at the helm, I doubt this would have happened – even though he is a 1960′s ad man.

1. Stay Loyal to Your Core (warning: race discussion ahead)
If you have any market share at all, build on it.

Old Spice under Weiden + Kennedy created betrayal. Many of you are going to think the following words are nonsense but those who do aren’t in my client demographic anyways so I’ll spill the beans. Do you know what P&G Old Spice’s Demographics are? I do. If you’ve been in any University Club, LA Fitness, or Equinox men’s locker room with a bunch of naked dudes, it’ll be obvious to you.

It’s mostly 50′s and 60′s white guys with some military background. “Mustafa” didn’t offend many of them. But let’s, for the sake of arguement say only 3.5% of them were uncomfortable with “Mustafa”. Then, from my subjective, non scientific analysis, these men are people who take themselves seriously. They range from old school executives to unionized blue collar workers. If the comical tone of the Weiden + Kennedy’s ad only offended another 3.5% of their core, well, that would account for why Old Spice sales went down 7%.

Personally, I have guy friends who are successful corporate African-Americans too. I know for a fact that a few of them use Old Spice. But after that silly messaging of a masculine product, I have a hunch they’d be as reluctant to walk through a checkout line with Old Spice as they would with a box of tampons.

How would the cash register boy react as one of my African American buddies tried to pay for his Old Spice? If you think I’m being silly, as a Korean American, my experience in the checkout line is slightly different depending on whether I’m purchasing bread or rice. True story.

The ad campaign made buying a regular brand embarrassing.

2. If You Target Another Demographic, Rebrand
You buy products because they are exclusive to your psychography. Guys who wear Ed Hardy shirts will not wear Polo.

I can’t think of any situation where the only way to increase your market share is to betray your existing base. If you want to bolt on a totally different demographic, you do so by totally rebranding. Nissan created Infinity because they didn’t want to lose their core and make Nissans feel inferior. Honda created Acura. Toyota created Lexus. McDonalds created Chipotle.

You’ll lose your core if you diffuse your marketing – even more so with a viral campaign. If you insist on keeping one brand while going after two demographics, at least do what Verizon Wireless and Subway did. Get a race-agnostic spokesperson.

3. W+K was so concerned with the medium that they forgot their message
The medium is just a medium. Whether you’re on a street corner or in Carnegie Hall, the medium is just a medium. Focus on the message. Don’t get distracted by the bells and whistles of the medium. W+K was in such a hurry to prove that their old-school culture was hip and relevant to “the parlance of our times” that they lost grasp of their message.

After a cursory review of any of their viral videos, it becomes clear that even their front line ad copy writers were confused as to who their target was. Mustafa generally begins his pitch, “Ladies.” But the tagline is, “smell like a man, man.”

Before you launch your next advertising or marketing initiative, let’s talk. We might do well putting our heads together. Call 310 598 1606 or email bob.wan.kim@gmail.com

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary

Advertising does not work. It doesn’t. If you’ve ever spent $50,000 on a media blitz, you’ll agree with me.

“If it works for Coke, it’ll work for us,” are the most famous last words I’ve heard from many corporate executives before launching a massive ad campaign and subsequently filing chapter 11.

It’s even worse when you spend a couple hundred thousand with the New Jersey Nets and plaster your name (@GaryVee) all over a billboard ad to hear pins drop and crickets chirp – only, not both at the same time.

The real problem is that inexperienced marketing executives and even Ivy B-Schools work off the logic that “since Coke has been doing this for a hundred years and is a success, they must know what they are doing.”

Actually, the above it totally true. They do know what they are doing. The problem is that their formula doesn’t apply to your business. First, they have hundred year name recognition going for them. Second, they have a global “convenience product” that is just 3 steps away from a point-of-sale. Third, they have “impulse buy” pricing.

This is why ads work for Coke. A coke ad is nothing more than a surrogate wife standing next to you at the check-out line asking, “honey, did you pick up the milk?”

Since Coke is positioned geographically and costographically at super low resistance, all you need is a super low impact suggestion to buy. This is the only reason advertisements work for companies. And I’m guessing that your product is not nearly as easy to impulsively toss into the shopping cart.

For your product or service that is more expensive and has a much higher resistance to acquisition, you’ve logically got to utilize a much more powerful means of persuasion.

You may think at this point, “I don’t see how ordering with paypal off of my ecommerce site is any harder than picking up a coke and pulling out the Amex to pay for it at a counter.” If this is you, you’ve fallen into the same trap that many other experienced and successful marketing execs have. You’ve overlooked the “point of purchase context.” It’s dangerously easy to do. But doing so will be the ruin of your enterprise. Too many brilliant people are still scratching their heads wondering why their dot com failed. Here’s why:

If you look at purchasing a coke as a unique event then you compare that to ordering a product from your website as a unique event, then you’d be 100% correct that ordering your product has intrinsically much less resistance than picking up a Coke. But that’s not what happens.

You don’t have to go to the store for Coke. You don’t have to stand in line for Coke. You don’t have to park your car for Coke. You don’t even have to pay for Coke. You had to go to the store, stand in line, park your car, and pull out your Amex to get gas. These are all required events. The labor to piggyback a Coke into this required event is near zero resistance. Buying Coke is transparent. This is why a million dollar superbowl ad with the slightest persuasive impact is effective.

Can your product be acquired transparently? Windows 95 did. YKK zippers do. iPhone 4 bumpers should.

So if your marketing strategy has more resistance in it than Bill Gates and that Chinese guy that makes zippers for every pair of pants on earth, you’ll need a much higher “influence impact medium” of marketing. And the most effective sales method is a persuasive salesman. What’s even better than the most persuasive salesman is an army of clones of him. This is the value of video.

In our personal experience, video produces about 78 times (that’s 7800%) more sales than any other means of advertising or marketing. But as with everything, the medium of communication isn’t everything. You’ve got to execute the 27 factors of a successful video marketing campaign flawlessly. If you want to talk to us about these 27 factors, message us at

http://www.facebook.com/bob.wan.kim | http://twitter.com/journik | 310 598 1606

We’re eVolVement, the team that put together surprisingly cost effective videos for corporations and for Hollywood. Let’s have a conversation how we can use video to help you spread the word.

Posted via email from Social Media Marketing Strategies for the Closet Revolutionary