Old Spice Commercial Goes Viral…
Posted by Joe Cannon
This Old Spice commercial has taken the top spot on the Ad Age Viral Video Chart — moving past Doritos with more than 2 million views last week. It takes an interesting approach in its battle with Axe (if it even competes with Axe – different target markets?). Axe’s ads target 16 – 24 [13-18?] year old males. Just go to YouTube and search “Axe commercial” for examples. I have kind of stayed away from the Axe ads which are pretty sexist and might offend some of my students – but if you are up for it, search YouTube for the Axe “Clean Your Balls”. Old Spice seems to be taking a different tack by targeting women, who they figure will buy Old Spice for their man (who may be a bit older than the Axe target market).
One way to use these in class would be to show the two ads and ask students if they seem to be targeting different market segments and buying behavior. It could be a nice lead-in to some discussion about segmentation, targeting and/or consumer behavior. You can also see how Axe uses the internet to get racier ads (that would not get past network censors) in front of its target customers — and for a lower media cost no less. Note that the Old Spice ad is running on TV.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 8:58 am and is filed under Consumer behavior, Promotion, Segmentation, Video, Viral campaign. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.