Reality: Old Spice sales are actually up 107% in the last month

http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2010/07/hey-old-spice-haters-sales-are-up-107.html

by sferik • 16 years ago

161 55 16 years ago

adweek.blogs.com

jdminhbg• 16 years ago

I didn't follow up on the "sales are down" stories too much, but it did seem pretty hard to believe that they had data 48 hrs after the campaign ended.

Elite• 16 years ago

The data from the story saying their sales were down was for the 52 weeks ending in April or May.

And even those numbers were suspect, as there was another retail data source that said the opposite -- that sales were slightly up..

I never believed for a second that the latest campaign ended up as a LOSS.

miah_• 16 years ago

Proving once again that consumers are easily influenced.

hugh37• 16 years ago

I enjoyed the Old Spice ads so much that I considered going out and buying some just as a way of saying thanks. Call it a charitable donation to support the arts.

(I still haven't actually bought any, though, as I still can't get over my mental image of Old Spice as "really cheap cologne.)

Alex39173• 16 years ago

Cheap cologne with hormone disruptors. Have fun not being able to have kids if you wear it.

MrRage3• 16 years ago

These ads certainly had better aesthetics than most, but something dies inside me when an advertisement is considered art. I also don't understand why you would view buying Old Spice as a charitable donation.

sliverstorm3• 16 years ago

Have you considered that maybe it's not that Old Spice is really cheap cologne, but all the other stuff is stupidly overpriced cologne? The fact that most of the mainline colognes bear the name of extravagant product lines or music superstars should be a clue.

As an example to support my argument, I'm in the process of making a classic cologne that requires some alcohol, (preferably very hard alcohol), some things from your spice cabinet, a few leaves, and more alcohol. I decided to grow my own leaves, and thus am currently in the 'grow the tree phase', but really that's not even necessary.

pxlpshr• 16 years ago

I just use their body spray as deodorant because my body doesn't freak out over aluminum ingredients which is found in almost all solid products (causes me to sweat excessively)... I also find the brand more timeless, a lot less obnoxious than AXE which just screams Ed Hardy.

ps. The markup on cologne/perfume is ridiculous, it's liquid gold and why so many celebrities release their own variation. Your impression of cheap is simply defined by luxury pricing and marketing.

icey• 16 years ago

Isn't the existence of the entire advertising / marketing industry predicated on being able to influence consumers?

malbiniak• 16 years ago

if consumers are so easily influenced, why do so many startups have a hard time influencing them?

robryan• 16 years ago

Customers have never heard of them.

wisty2• 16 years ago

Making a hit ad can't be easy. Not if you want to outdo everyone else screaming for eyeballs.

Google just did an SVG on a bunch of matrices to find the websites you'd most likely end up on if you randomly walked over the entire internet. It's deceptively simple, but only in retrospect.

pkaler• 16 years ago

Don't believe numbers from Nielson, NPD group, Marc, Ad Mob, etc. The only real numbers are GAAP that come out of the accounting department. This is true for Old Spice, iPhone vs Android, game consoles, etc.

jacquesm• 16 years ago

That, and any campaign has the built in risk of simply driving a lot of sales forward, but not to increase the total sales volume by much, and that effect can only be established a long time after the campaign has run.

llimllib• 16 years ago

> Sales numbers are generally legit. We really dont do anything that would mess with those.

via my brother at Nielsen, who whould happily tell me if the numbers were bull.

TheAmazingIdiot2• 16 years ago

Hmm. The guy is tremendous, the commercials are funny. And they're memorable.

And I still dont like aldehyde based scents, and prefer my herbalist to make my own scents. They cost a bit more than normal, but last years. Guess that's the kind of people I associate with being a witch and all.

khafra2• 16 years ago

What normal do they cost more than? I'm a big fan of Creed's Millisime Imperial and L'Artisan's Voluer de Roses, but if your herbalist could outdo those two in their own categories and last longer, I'd pay a bit more.

TheAmazingIdiot2• 16 years ago

Considering that I am not an herbalist, and only dabble in some aspects of oils and creams, I can somewhat answer that.

Last I know she was in the Kansas City area going to Lillies War, part of the SCA. She travels the world for different botanicals, and buys else what she cannot retrieve. She extracts these botanicals herself. The last I heard, she had 6 different amber oils, all dependent on the amber used.

The most impressive thing about this all is her: she can separate each individual scent from already-done compounds. And she has this cool ability that if she meets you, she 'knows' the perfect scent for you.

I will see if I can get permission for me to give you her contact information. Usually after Lillies War, she's swamped.

proexploit• 16 years ago

The percentage change may be questionable based on the objections raised by pkaler & jacquesm but I still think there's an obvious effect and it may not be just due to "easily convinced consumers".

In the past, my impression of Old Spice was that it was old fashioned, for seniors, etc. I'm just one consumer, but if this was a common perception, it looks like Old Spice identified their weakness and targeted it. If you ask me today what my impression of Old Spice is, it's quite different. They're a company willing to make unique commercials and take some risks. They have new scents are targeted at a younger crowd (I remember seeing After Hours in stores) and I no longer view the company as "old" Old Spice. Even though my perception has changed, I don't view it as being convinced or tricked as a consumer, but a reinterpretation of a company based on their actions. I've been wrong before.

khafra2• 16 years ago

A cologne purchase is different from a computer purchase or something in that if your peer group thinks it's cool, that actually does make it better than the alternatives.

(edited to remove ambiguity)

generalk• 16 years ago

How is that different from a computer purchase? See: Apple.

anigbrowl• 16 years ago

Like you, I'm unsure whether this is confirmation bias or not - but as I hit 40, my impression is that this is the 3rd time I've seen 'Old Spice' transition from being 'generic present for Dad' to being hip for young men.

I don't know whether it's something to do with the economy (since it's very affordable compared to designer brands) or whether the firm identified a generational cycle affecting their sales and made a conscious decision to build a long-term strategy around it, which Proctor & Gamble have just perpetuated. I remember buying Old Spice for my Dad, then buying some of their wares for myself back in the 90s because it amusingly 'retro' or ironic, and a few years from now I'll be the grateful Dad getting a bottle for Christmas. During the same period they've switched their logo from an old-fashioned 3-masted sailing ship to a sporty modern yacht...and back again.

Yes, bottle - the after-shave comes in the same container that it did when I was a boy and thought OS epitomized grown-up man stuff. Back then it was advertised (on TV at Christmas, and in the cinema all year around) with a 30 second clip of a guy surfing, set to Carl Orff's 'Carmina Burana' [1]. That seems like cheesy nostalgia now, but back in the 1970s it was the media equivalent of a hand grenade - overtly masculine, movie-quality eye candy, and unquestioning self-confidence. Sound familiar? And notice, if you will, that it's both new and 'classic'. Rather like their marketing strategy :-)

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rbZr7YoqK0

boredguy82• 16 years ago

If you like a commercial, odds are decent that it came from Wieden + Kennedy, perhaps most famous for creating "Just Do It". Remember: heading into the '90s, Reebok dominated Nike. The coining of "Just Do It" and the attendant campaigns were perhaps a major factor in propelling Nike to the forefront of their market. W+K also made Honda's famous "cog" commercial.

They're also doing some work that may be interesting to the HN crowd over at http://www.wk.com/incubator. If I were a far more brilliant and creative person, I'd love to just hang out with their directors: they do a consistently good job in an area that's very hard to get right again and again over time.

Goosey• 16 years ago

It is a little unclear from your post: are you just speculating that since it is a good commercial it came from W+K, or are you saying that it DID come from W+K in a roundabout way?

It's really interesting to hear some of their past success, but randomly attributing any good campaign to them seems a little strange to me. :)

newmediaclay• 16 years ago

This campaign DID come from W+K. So did the "Write the Future" World Cup campaign.

william42• 16 years ago

According to Wikipedia's page on W+K, these commercials did in fact come from theme.

boredguy82• 16 years ago

"randomly attributing any good campaign to them seems a little strange to me"

That would be strange, and is probably an aid in the interpretive task of reading the post ;)

"In philosophy and rhetoric, the principle of charity requires interpreting a speaker's statements to be rational and, in the case of any argument, considering its best, strongest possible interpretation."

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

adamhowell• 16 years ago

If you haven't seen it, you'd probably enjoy the documentary Art & Copy (http://www.artandcopyfilm.com).

W+K are featured prominently, as are most of the other stalwarts of the marketing industry.

lanstein• 16 years ago

W+K also made the Nike ad that's featured in the movie What Women Want, which I thought would have been a great ad to use in real life.

wisty2• 16 years ago

I'm pretty sure What Women Want was an ad. People just paid to see it.

Not that this detracts from W + K's success record.

kadavy• 16 years ago

I wonder what the campaign cost to run in comparison to these increased sales.

Reality: Old Spice sales are actually up 107% in the last month

Related Stories