Numa Numa and the Old Spice Guy What is said to be the first viral video was posted on December 4, 2004. It was created for his own amusement by a nineteen-year-old New Jersey resident Gary Brolsma. He was lip-syncing to a song from an obscure Moldavian pop group that was popular in Europe at the time. The name of the song was Dragostea Din Tei; the video is known by the translation Numa Numa. It is important to recognize that this was before , which was introduced in February 2005. Even so, according to CNET, as of December 2014 the video had been viewed over 700 million times, some of those views are on where someone other than Gary uploaded it. How could a video like this possibly go viral? An early fan, Tom Fulp, posted it on his creative community website, Newsgrounds. He says, Gary looked like a fun guy having a good time. It made you smile and feel happy when you watched it. The public took it from there. That is the essential problem with making a marketing video go viral; it is not in the control of the marketer! It does sometimes happen, though, as in the case of Gillettes Old Spice Guy. Gillette introduced its first mens body wash product in 2003. By 2009 the category was crowded and highly competitive. Worse, Gillette became aware that Dove was launching a campaign for its product during Super Bowl 2010. Dove was a particularly troublesome competitor because it was a female-oriented brand and over 60% of mens body wash purchases were made by women. When Wieden + Kennedy, the advertising agency working on Old Spice, began designing the Old Spice campaign, they drew on the heritage of the brand. The Old Spice Guy campaign centered on former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa (the Old Spice Guy) in a video that was over-the-top in masculinity. The commercial opened with, Hello, Ladies. Look at your man. Now back at me. Now back at your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isnt me, but if he stopped using ladies scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like hes me. The agency used pre- and post Super Bowl promotion to build buzz. The video got social media attention before and after the game, and by the time it debuted on TV, the day after the Super Bowl, many people assumed that they first saw in on the game. Courtesy of The Advertising Archives In June 2010 the agency launched a social media campaign to leverage the attention the ad had achieved. To achieve this, the team created over 180 response videos, where the Old Spice Guy recorded video replies to comments left by online influencers and celebrities. As part of the campaign the agency ran a Twitter ad promotion, which featured the product as a trending topic. The campaign was also supported by traditional media buys in targeted environments, as well as discount coupons to further help encourage sales of the product. Hence, Old Spice did not rely solely on word of mouth to spread the video. They produced a powerful video, but seeded it with traditional marketing as well. The Man Your Man Could Smell Like video quickly became a cultural phenomenon. In the first day of the Old Spice campaign, the video received 6 million views, 20 million views by the third day, and 40 million views by the end of the week. As a consequence, the Old Spice Twitter account shot up to over 43,000 followers and the companys channel was viewed over 58 million times. This traction drove a 300% increase in traffic to the website: OldSpice.com and increased the number of interactions on the companys Facebook page by 800%. Clearly, the videos success had a significant impact on engagement in other social media channels for Old Spice. Furthermore, the Old Spice campaign spurred hundreds of parody videos, including one by Grover on Sesame Street, as well as invitations for the actor, Isaiah Mustafa, to appear on popular TV talk shows, such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and Ellen, to discuss the ad. Most important, the videos were successful in driving sales of the Old Spice Body Wash. Nielson estimated that sales of the product jumped 55% in the three months during the campaign, with a 107% lift in July 2010 alone, when the social media campaign was launched. And the Old Spice videos were effective in reaching the target demographicwomen. Old Spice accounted for 75% of the conversations in the category during 2010 and half of those conversations came from women. It is worth noting that the immense success of the Old Spice video campaign is difficult to replicate. The basic concept of the Old Spice Guy had been tested a number of times by Procter & Gamble without success. The right creative aspects, which took many years to hone, were what made the campaign so effective. Even so, the videos that followed attracted less attention, although Gillette credited them with lifting sales. As David Hallerman of Advertising Age so clearly puts it, the most clever marketers saw a major sticking point in making the Old Spice [Guy] into a model for their own campaigns: its success depended on excellent, compelling creative. And while every brand would like to think all its video assets are compelling, thats clearly not the case. Making advertising videos that consumers want to watch is, in truth, very, very difficult. The key take-away from these two case histories? A video that goes viral is, in large part, luck. Even without that kind of infrequent luck, however, video has become a key part of the marketers content portfolio and thoughtful strategy and careful planning are essential. Its continuing growth underscores the need for good video marketing.

How would you answer the two questions at the end?