Old Spice Is Killing It on YouTube Again, but Sales Are Down Double-Digits

By now it's clear Isaiah Mustafa has elbowed aside faux competition from Fabio to remain Old Spice Guy. The latest iteration of the video campaign drew 17 million viewers last week, the most since Volkswagen's "The Force" campaign in February. Visible Measures identified more than 60 original clips for the campaign, and nearly 50 uploaded just last week. The campaign has generated a whopping 50,000 comments thus far. But to echo the question in the comments section of nearly any story about Mr. Mustafa: Has he really sold much Old Spice? Yes, at least in a qualified way. Last year at this time, as Old Spice and Wieden & Kennedy were setting viral-video records with the "Responses" campaign, Procter & Gamble Co. also was spewing so many buy-one-get-one-free coupons for Old Spice body wash that it swamped the impact any advertising could have. In recent months, Old Spice has trimmed couponing, though still offering less-appealing coupons combining deodorant and body wash. Unilever rival Axe, in catchup mode, has stepped up its own freebie deals on body wash since last summer. Cooling the deals has led Old Spice body wash to a 24% sales decline in the four weeks ended July 10 and a 9% decline for the 12-weeks period vs. a year ago, according to SymphonyIRI data. Yet it's still ahead of Axe for each of those periods and, by a smaller margin, for the 52 weeks. And any way you cut it, Old Spice is the leading men's brand now -- though that data doesn't cover Walmart, club and dollar stores. And Beiersdorf's Nivea and Henkel's Right Guard are gaining more ground than either of late. A year ago, boosted by Mr. Mustafa and lots of coupons, Old Spice sales were up more than 100% in the July period. But comparing the most recent four weeks to two years ago, with more normal promotion on both ends, Old Spice body wash sales still are up more than 50%. Mr. Mustafa must get credit for some of that , though inducing people to try Old Spice by largely giving it away last year and a price per ounce that now remains lower than Axe hasn't hurt either. *The Visible Measures Top 10 Viral Video Ad Campaigns Chart focuses on brand-driven viral video ads that appear on online-video-sharing destinations. Each campaign is measured on a True Reach basis, which includes viewership of both brand-syndicated video clips and viewer-driven social video placements. The data are compiled using the Visible Measures Viral Reach Database, a constantly growing repository of analytic data on more than 100 million internet videos across more than 150 video-sharing destinations. Note: This analysis does not include Visible Measures' paid-placement (i.e., overlays, pre-/mid-/post-roll) performance data or video views on private sites. This chart does not include movie trailers, video-game campaigns, TV show or media network promotions, or public service announcements. View-count results are incremental by week. **Indicates percent change in views compared with the same period the week before. To notify Visible Measures of an upcoming video ad campaign, or for an end-to-end assessment of your campaign's overall performance, please contact Visible Measures directly.

Old Spice Is Killing It on YouTube Again, but Sales Are Down Double-Digits

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