The Agency Your Agency Could Market Like

If the world could agree on anything, it would likely agree that the Old Spice campaign, "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," is one of the best marketing campaigns in recent history. The commercials are random and bizarre, but in a charming way. They make us look up and pay attention to figure out what's going on. The line delivery has a brisk pace that requires us to pay attention to keep up. No time to think about why Isaiah Mustafa is suddenly on a horse when he was stepping out of the shower mere seconds ago. Just let the random wash over you and hop on the crazy train. We have shirtless men who smell good.

But let's back up a bit. How does someone hear "men's body wash" and think "thirty seconds of non sequiturs?" Well let's ask Wieden+Kennedy, the geniuses behind the marketing campaign that took the internet by storm.

On their site, they mention that they are "an independent, creatively driven" group that focuses on forming bonds between the client and the consumer. Wieden+Kennedy also believe that it doesn't matter how you express an idea as long as it's good. Just looking at the Old Spice ads carries all this across, as they are certainly creative and succeeded in drawing the audiences attention to the point where everyone knows and loves them. Parodies of the campaign have been done in multiple forms of media, even showing up on Sesame Street of all places.

(And yet the target audience probably doesn't even know what Old Spice is.)

To have a truly good marketing campaign, you need to have ultimately succeeded in three areas: The market needs to remember your campaign, it needs to like your campaign, and it needs to remember your product. Old Spice is truly the crowning jewel of good marketing for its massive success in all three of these areas.

And with that, I leave you with the whistle. Yeah, you know the one. You're playing it in your head right now. I don't even need to post a sound clip here. I'm on a horse.