Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa are not only successful American actors, but were also former American football players. The use of Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa in this advertisement defines masculinity as being talented and successful. Masculinity is achieved through the use of facial expressions, physique, and the setting of the advertisement. Masculinity is expressed as physical strength and skill, power, wealth, sexual prowess, and ultimately, success. Librarians: prepare.Show More In the Old Spice advertisements featuring Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa, the advertisers use distinctive visual elements to portray the idea of masculinity. Mark my words, once you’ve got Old Spicy on your side and you can sell a couple of YouTube parodies in a couple of months, you’re standing on the edge of your pop-culture moment. Reading a book.” …on a horse.Įdit: NPR thinks libraries are on the road to a pop culture (and popularity) resurgence: And there is even a Twitter petition for oldspice guy to do an ALA READ poster “I’m at a library. This ad campaign has led in a strange direction that has nothing to do with the original products. Lee Library:Īnything is possible when you’re in the library: Thanks.”īooks available en masse at your local library:īut Old Spice has even served as the parody/satire or as I prefer to call it, “cultural platform” for this campaign for Brigham Young University’s Harold B.
First, the official Old Spice campaign had a video response to this tweet: LISNews author Andy Woodworth) wrote “ATTN LIBRARIAN TWEEPS: Need help getting guy to say a few words regarding libraries. Some of the best and funniest marketing for libraries comes from this Old Spice campaign. So what does this have to do with libraries? After the jump!
“Another lesson from this successful program is the value of giving up some control, which happened at several different levels… A typical ad takes months to plan and execute … Consumers were asked for their input, then a team of social media experts, marketers, writers, videographers and actor Isaiah Mustafa were sequestered to produce over 150 different video responses over the course of two days.” Seriously, this takes work - and letting customers or fans play an important role: What this campaign effectively shows is that it is possible for a commercial entity to create a viral campaign - but it takes a great deal of planning and buy-in, “ using a team of around 35 people working 12 hours a day for its three day duration.”
The YouTube videos managed to attract more online views in 24 hours than Susan Boyle and President Obama’s victory speech. The vast majority of the videos directly responded to tweets - and there was even a marriage proposal.Īccording to NPR (with an interesting overview of the phenomenon), Over the course of three days, Old Spice posted 180 short videos on YouTube. The commercial has spawned many parodies - mostly focusing on the vocal style used, the quick cuts used, and shirtlessness.īut recently, Old Spice decided to take the campaign viral - and did so with a major splash. If you have watched television since February, especially sports programming, then you have likely seen at least one of the Old Spice commercials, The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, starring Isaiah Mustafa.