Reality: Old Spice sales are down since ad campaign began

http://tv.yahoo.com/blog/despite-enormous-popularity-old-spice-guy-not-helping-sales--1403

by cwan • 16 years ago

32 51 16 years ago

tv.yahoo.com

edanm2• 16 years ago

Isn't it way too early to tell what the effects of the campaign are?

I for one had never heard of Old Spice before, still haven't actually seen their product (not so prevalent here), but I do look out for it when I go to buy deodarant, since I want to try it out.

_pi5• 16 years ago

Last time I "tried" Old Spice I got a rash. They make crappy deodorant. It's okay if you're used to it but if you switch prepare for the worst. For some reason I've found this to be more common with Old Spice rather than any other deodorant brand.

eelco• 16 years ago

What do you mean with "tried"? What did you actually do with it?

sprout• 16 years ago

I've gotten a rash from just about every deodorant on the market after half a container or so. The only ones I trust are the simple white cake ones. And they usually say 'dermatologist tested' since they require a gimmick to be sold.

I wish we could go back to when nobody wore the stuff.

dmm3• 16 years ago

> perfect example of the male body

Ha! I must spend too much time around weightlifters/powerlifters. He looked a little scrawny to me.

Another interesting case of internet popularity not translating into sales was "Snakes on a Plane". From wikipedia:

""" Due to the Internet hype surrounding the film, industry analysts estimated the film's opening box office to be between US$20 million and US$30 million.[4] While Snakes on a Plane did narrowly beat Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby for the number one position during its opening weekend, it did not meet these estimates and grossed only $US15.25 million in its opening days, a disappointment for New Line Cinema. ""

raganwald4• 16 years ago

While I admire powerlifters, I wouldn't consider an extremely muscular body aesthetically perfect. My man crush is on athletes who are muscular but not extremely so, like Greg Louganis, Rafer Johnson, or Roger Federer.

Federer can carry my bags any day ;-)

dmm3• 16 years ago

I never said that powerlifters were perfect. There are obviously many attractive body types. And almost anything is more attractive than the fat standard. Physical beauty is pretty small thing. We all get old. It matters a lot more what you create and how you treat children.

I was just making a little observation about how much perspective matters. No insult was intended for the gentlemen in question. It's just that after hanging around with powerlifters I probably would call someone with a bigger chest/shoulders perfect.

But downvote away! I have karma to burn.

edanm2• 16 years ago

I agree. And Isaiah Mustafa (the actor) is a former wide receiver in the NFL, so he's got an athlete's body.

raganwald4• 16 years ago

In all fairness to the team behind this, they're obviously trying to cross the product over into a new demographic. If Old Spice's existing demographic is dying off, there can be a huge payoff if they succeed in making it hip and ironic. Remember the Black Label campaigns in the 90s? That succeeded in turning a moribund beer brand into a hip brand. It's worth swinging the bat a few times over the next five years to see if they can do something with Old Spice.

Tichy• 16 years ago

I guess they should have used the occasion to say "oh by the way, we are now called 'young spice'".

SamAtt• 16 years ago

Forbes contradicts this (http://tinyurl.com/2exqhg7). Here's the quote...

And, perhaps, persuasive. Total sales for Old Spice body wash at supermarkets, drugstores and mass market retailers excluding Wal-Mart were up 16.7% in the 52-week period ending June 13, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago-based market research firm.

So the yahoo article is singling out the one sub-brand of body wash in the Old Spice Man's hand (which is down) but the brand itself seems to be up. Now I don't know about the rest of you but I didn't even notice what specific type of Old Spice Body Wash he was holding and I don't think others had either. So I don't think that specific sub-brand's falling sales reflect on the ads at all.

(To give the appropriate plug I actually found the forbes link via this site: http://tinyurl.com/27d9aer)

Elite• 16 years ago

This makes more sense to me. It would be very surprising if what I think one of the most engaging ad campaigns in recent memory had a NEGATIVE impact on sales.

a-priori• 16 years ago

Not saying it happened here, but one way this could happen is if the ad campaign alienated a large segment of the brand's existing consumer base.

pavel_lishin• 16 years ago

When did they start running the ads? That increase could have been at the beginning of that year-long period.

Anechoic• 16 years ago

The first ad in the series ran during the Super Bowl in February.

pchristensen2• 16 years ago

I love the Old Spice Guy and I never picked up on a specific product he was pitching, just the brand itself.

On the other hand, in Terry Crews' commercials for Old Spice Odor Blocker (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tI4CbCniBI for instance), they're funny commercials but they're for a specific product - Odor Blocker Body Wash - and they make a specific claim - block B.O. for 1 hours. I loved the commercials so I tried it out, and it worked as claimed so it's now the one I buy every time. It was the most positive advertising experience I've had in as long as I can remember.

maukdaddy• 16 years ago

Came here to point out the same facts.

Score another one for the awesome, new media who can't be bothered to fact-check or research for even 5 minutes.

edit: Mod me down if you wish, but the sales statistics quoted were for a period BEFORE the damn commercials even started running. A simple 5 minute check would have caught that.

j_baker• 16 years ago

My first instincts are to assume this is a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" statement. Just because sales are falling doesn't mean the commercial is ineffective. After all, how do you know that sales wouldn't be down 14% without the ads?

username3• 16 years ago

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

MrRage3• 16 years ago

If that's the case then you can say the commercial is ineffective, because you can say that the commercial didn't raise sales. You can never conclusively say that the commercial raised sales when they're up or lowered sales when they're down, but the commercial surely didn't raise sales when they're down.

MrRage3• 16 years ago

For those who are downvoting me, care to explain why I deserve it? Where am I wrong?

brm• 16 years ago

Either way, when your ad campaign is the most remarkable thing about your product you still have a problem.

nzmsv• 16 years ago

Coca-Cola seems to be doing fine though.

detst3• 16 years ago

What's remarkable about any of their competitors?

rythie• 16 years ago

This really is a poor article.

It's not stated if that's a new product or an established one they are talking about. Also, whilst they say one product is down, what about the others? If you dig into the bnet article (http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10007535/the-old-spice-...) you see that the sales figures are for the 52 weeks upto the 13 June - long before the online campaign started.

All the yahoo video links fail to load properly for me. The mention YouTube but don't link to it all. They link to their own previous coverage for no good reason.

jsz0• 16 years ago

No advertising campaign is going to make people rush into their bathroom, throw away all their old supplies, and rush out and buy new ones. You'd need to look at least a few months of sales to determine how successful it was.

nevinera• 16 years ago

>Are the women targeted by the ads not actually the ones making body-wash-related decisions for the men in their life?

Those ads are clearly not targeted at women.

silencio2• 16 years ago

Neither are their products. :( As a woman, the ads amused me so much that I was tempted to buy one of their products, but it was the fairly masculine scents that put me off. If Old Spice ever sold unscented products (looks like they did at some point, then gave up on those..), or products with more feminine scents, I'd probably try it at least once just because of the social media success.

scelerat• 16 years ago

Conventional advertising wisdom revolves around brand awareness. Old Spice just got millions of people to say "Old Spice" to their friends a hundred times a day each with a big happy smile on their face. If sales are down, I'd bet its anomalous and/or too soon to tell. Look at the numbers six months to a year from now.

bdickason• 16 years ago

This is the irony of most internet advertising campaigns. Media Buyers (the people who organize ad campaigns) are graded on three things: -Brand Awareness (how many people see it) -CPM/Cost Per Mille (how much the ad costs per 1000 impressions) -CTR/Click Thru Rate (how many people clicked on the ads)

Most ad campaigns have nothing to do with actually trying to drive product and most ad agencies are not tied to incentives surrounding product sales.

Reality: Old Spice sales are down since ad campaign began

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