New Old Spice Advert to Be Leaked to One Lucky Fan

The man your man could smell like, Isaiah Mustafa, is back.

The Old Spice adverts were a viral sensation last year, with one of the videos receiving almost 29 million views -- making it the most viewed advert of 2010 (the brand’s YouTube channel total upload views currently sit at 184,542,802!). So can they build upon that success or is this a ‘swan dive’ too far for the brand?

The brand successfully used social media last year to interact with consumers and create a buzz around the campaign. This year they’re trying to adopt similar tactics in the hope that they’ll strike ‘advertising gold’ twice.

On January 20th, Old Spice released a short teaser video on YouTube announcing the Old Spice guy’s come back.

On Friday, in another YouTube video, it was revealed that one lucky ‘Old Spice fan’ would be given access to the new advert before anyone else.

Old Spice plan to email the advert to one carefully chosen person in advance of it’s office TV launch in the States on February 7th, the day after the Super Bowl. It is hoped that this person will then promote the advert on their social network.

So can the advert go from an audience of one, to an audience of millions? Probably, considering that the initial, relatively dull, ‘come back’ video has already got almost 600,000 views in a week.

This will be an interesting one to watch for sure.

Twitter to be left on the Sidelines

Sports stars are no longer local heroes but rather they are high-value assets and brands in their own right. As such their lives are governed by a host of rules to ensure that their actions don’t garner negative publicity, affect their performance or that of their team. Now managers are adding social networking to the rule book after a series of tweeting sportsmen received fines and made headlines.

This week Steve Cotterill, manager of Portsmouth Football Club, banned his players from using Twitter. He’s stated they’ll be fined a hefty £1,000 a word if found tweeting. The same penalty will apply if the players use Facebook.

It’s likely Cotterill wants to protect his team from the kind of controversy which surrounded Liverpool’s Ryan Babel in the past week. Babel received a £10,000 from the English FA after he criticised referee Howard Webb following Manchester United’s win over Liverpool in the FA Cup. Babel posted a photoshopped picture of the referee wearing a United jersey (pictured). Continue reading »

Get People Pregnant with Ideas

I came across this great video which pokes fun at all the self-professed social media gurus out there who have more buzzwords than insight.

Want to get a feel for someone who has ‘read the whole internet about 5 times’? Watch “What Is A Bajillion Hits? (A Viral Vidifesto)”

Entertainment Trumped by Hashtags as the Top Twitter Trend

Steve Olenski on Social Media Today drew my attention to these great infographics which illustrate the shift in Twitter trends in the past year.

I would have thought, what with the ‘economic crisis’ and political debate becoming more mainstream, that the volume of tweets in relation to politics would have increased between 2009 and 2010 but it has actually decreased from 7% to 3%.

Entertainment tweets also fell from 38% in 2009 to 28% in 2010 – another surprise.

Twitter users have also gotten much more comfortable with the site with Hashtags rising significantly from just 9% in 2009 to 40% in 2010, making Hashtags the top trend category in 2010.

What the Trend, the company behind these stats, track over 100,000 trends on Twitter and have also put together a review of the top 20 Twitter Trends of 2010 on their site which is worth a look.

Stepping into the Future of Retail

Next time you walk into a shoe shop you may be greeted by the glare of wall-to-wall plasma screens rather than ‘eau-de-new shoes’. As of next year shoe shops and other stores may be going virtual, transforming shop walls into selling machines.

Retailers have long-since been struggling with a conundrum – how to have ample ‘floor space’, showcase as much stock as possible without cluttering the store front and yet have plenty of stock storage room. Intel have now potentially solved that problem by creating a ‘virtual footwear wall’ which can display thousands of products.

Intel partnered with Adidas to showcase how the wall would work with ‘adiVerse’. Shoppers can browse a massive array of up to 8000 shoes, viewing selected trainers from multiple angles, getting additional information and even video content where available. You can even see what people are saying about the shoe on social networks…viewing Twitter feeds and Facebook comments. Interestingly customers are given a tablet PC by a staff member in order to purchase the item, signing up for an account and giving Adidas a chance to capture customer info such as email addresses for further marketing initiatives.

Chris Aubrey, VP, Global Retail Marketing for Germany-based Adidas said: “We’ve leveled the playing field for small retailers…They can now act like a big flagship store in a town like New York.”

A prototype is expected to be rolled out in the UK next year. Watch this video with Aubrey for more info and to see the wall at work:

(h/t Fast Company)