A lot of ink has already been written about why Old Spice owned the Internet last week, and I don’t want to rehash the various aspects that RWW has covered, and Dave Stubbs has mentioned, among others, but what I feel is missing from the conversation is how it all started. My friend Leigh Himel deconstructed what the brief could have looked like, and I think it’s worth expanding on to describe how the campaign set the foundation for success.

It all started with the insight and a deep understanding of the market and the consumer.

The objective, as Leigh rightly points out, was to re-position and re-invigorate the brand.  To do this the team needed to understand the competitive landscape, the perspective consumers had of the brand, and the territory they had to play in. The market was saturated with female unfriendly AXE advertising, and as women are the primary consumers for male scent gifts, turning that into an advantage would have been mandatory for Old Spice.

With that as the starting point the Old Spice team (with a receptive client) decided to do the obvious: appeal to women without alienating men.

Old Spice cast the perfect actor for the new positioning. A former NFL player, a nice guy, and someone who wasn’t so perfect that men would feel threatened. Genius casting. Based on, I imagine, a perfect casting brief.

The next step was to create a seriously funny commercial that turned all the cliche’s of advertising and film on their heads. “Look at your man, now back at me”. “It’s now diamonds”. “I’m on a horse”. They made a commercial that was frankly better than 90% of the TV shows it appeared alongside. I first heard of it because my partner was watching TV and told me I had to see it. So what did I do? I went to YouTube and there it was. Word of mouth at it’s finest, but it would have been dead in the water if the team hadn’t thought to seed it online first.

They let that roll and roll it did. Everyone who saw the commercial started sharing it, and a character was born.

Now what to do with the follow up? The character was a success both online and offline and while they could continue to let it ride as a TV spot, the proof was there that they could take advantage of how much the spot resonated with the folks online.

The plan was to create a new TV spot, let that simmer for a bit and then pounce. The social media marketers did their homework and decided what the right outlets were to start spreading the character. The fact they took on 4Chan and won speaks volumes about how integrated and on the ball they were. While everyone talks about how they took over Twitter in a day, they really started seeding the campaign before that. They laid the groundwork. And it paid off. Big time.

It came on my radar with @jakrose tweeting that he’d received a video reply early Tuesday morning. “Fry it up and eat it down JakRose. Fry it up and eat it down.” The network effect took over and for the next two days it was all I cared about that was happening online. The social team did a brilliant job monitoring responses and working with the creatives to write compelling copy. They didn’t just target celebrities and “influencers” but responded to comments, Diggs, tweets and blog posts that they felt fit with the character as a whole. They were obviously fully immersed in the language and cadence of the social web because their video responses contained references only a geek would love (or get). They respected all the unwritten rules of the culture and tailored their responses to match the brand, and the mediums they were using.

They embraced the mash-ups and promoted them. They let the community roll with it. They poked fun at themselves (Old Spice responding to @isiahmustafa) And they set a time limit. Any longer than 2 days and it would have become tired. Any shorter and it would have been disappointing. The mash-ups continue to roll in, with the most recent being Mel Gibson calling the Old Spice Guy.

It was brilliance that came from the initial insights and work they did a couple of years ago. And deep understanding of how the social web works.

The challenge will be what they do next and if it moves the needle at the top of the purchase funnel (awareness & consideration). But I have faith, and am looking forward to every moment of it!

[Update August 13, 2010] W+K just released their case-study of the campaign: Old Spice is now the #1 brand of body wash for men, with sales increasing 107% in the last month alone.

3beat

Lately, one of the hot topics around our shop has been how to cut the cable. At least 5 of us have canceled our cable contracts, added OTA HD, or both. For me, it’s been an interesting project and I thought I’d share the experience.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had a while ago when I was explaining my plan to get off the TV grid. Someone said to me, “it makes sense that you’d do that, you interactive guys think TV is dead.” But I don’t. I love TV and I think it’s far from dying. According to the recent Neilson 3 Screen report (pdf), TV is thriving.

<blockquote>”Viewing of video on television, Internet and mobile devices continues to increase and has hit record levels.”</blockquote>

What is changing is how consumers access and consume TV shows and movies. To me, that’s the real issue because it illustrates how networks need to adapt in order to meet our changing consumption habits. If they ignore the new reality they risk a similar future as the music industry and will become irrelevant. Networks must reinvent themselves mostly because that’s exactly what consumers are doing.

After years of dishing out big bucks to Bell ExpressVu I finally got my act together and canceled my $100/month satellite service. I’m no longer tied to a traditional source for my entertainment needs. My path to freedom took three simple steps.

First, I re-configured my existing home network to automatically collect and organize content. The main computer in my home is a G5 tower and it handles the bulk of all the data coming in and out of my home. It’s not an actual server, but that’s basically what it does. This box moves content around, modifies it, and then parks everything on a 2TB network accessible storage device. I also upgraded my Rogers Internet connection to the 10MB Extreme package. I’m reasonably happy with it now that my system is optimized to deal with throttling. For the most part, bandwidth caps are no longer a concern. To monitor the content I want and access it the moment it becomes available, I use TVshows and Ted. And apart from my newsgroup client (Thanks Chris Erwin), I use Transmission for the heavy lifting.

Next I had to get the content from my network onto my screen(s). I opted to integrate a 40GB AppleTV into my home theatre as my media server. Some people have asked why I didn’t use a Mac Mini, and the simple answer is cost. The secondary purpose of this project was to reduce the amount I pay for home entertainment and the AppleTV integrated perfectly into my existing home network for around $150. Plus, I’m storing all data on an NAS device so I didn’t need the larger capacity version, and I really didn’t want another box to maintain.

I patched my AppleTV to run both Boxee and XBMC. The process was remarkably simple and easy to do – with all the code, how-tos, and decent video walkthroughs at my fingertips. From start to finish I was up and running in about 20-mins.

I’m a huge Boxee fan, but I actually find I use XBMC more often. I use Boxee to watch Internet channels like the Revision3, Make and TWiT – thanks to the simplicity of the repository and apps service. But I rarely use Boxee for movies and TV shows. Instead, I rely on XBMC with the MediaStream skin which pretty much makes it an AppleTV version of Plex. (UPDATE: Andreas correctly points out that XBMC for AppleTV is “not ‘like Plex’, it is Plex that is like XBMC”. Sorry for the confusion). It’s easy to configure. Simple to use. And looks absolutely stunning on a 50″ screen (thank you teamrazorfish). I also love how it indexes any new content it finds on my networked drive, scrapes IMDb and IMDbTV for names, titles and plot summaries, and then downloads things like artwork and cast details in the background.

The last part of the puzzle I wanted to solve was how to get local TV station programming for things like news and sports. Thankfully, most stations now broadcast over-the-air ATSC signals (which is uncompressed HD) and all you need is the equipment to grab them. I removed my satellite dish and mounted two Channel Master 4220 antennas. I aimed one at the CN Tower and the other at Buffalo, NY. Now I have access to around 15 crystal clear HD channels.

My 50″ Panasonic plasma is a commercial unit and doesn’t have a built-in tuner so I needed to find an ATSC decoder box to convert the OTA HD signal. After pouring through various forums I considered the HD HomeRun. But decided that the Samsung DTB-H260F was the one for me. Unfortunately it’s not available in Canada. Fortunately I found one on eBay (incidentally, the only thing I use eBay for these days is to buy/sell second hand geek toys). I think this unit was taken off the market because of a beef with the MPAA because it allows straight pass-through of the HD signal to any recording device. Newer ATSC decoders – especially ones with built-in recorders – down rez the HD signal to SC for storage, the uprez for viewing, resulting in a degraded HD signal and something I wanted to avoid. With my setup I grab uncompressed HD signals over-the-air, my Samsung box takes the signal data to create the channel guide and passes the unaltered 720p/1080i signal through to my home theater receiver which then uprezes it to 1080p and passes it to my plasma. And voila, free HDTV programming.

So, why did I do it? Mostly because I could. I’ve always hated being tied to someone else’s schedule, especially one that defines when and how I can consume media. I tried time-shifting with Bell ExpressVu and even that left me annoyed. With my new home system I can watch whatever, whenever and however I want. I can watch it on the TV in my living room. I can watch it on the computer in my den. And I can watch it on my iPhone in the backyard. I’m the one that decides. And that’s what networks can’t wrap their heads around. They insist on creating systems that define the habits of viewers instead of delivering an experience that their customers want. If they don’t switch gears they are doomed. TV will live. Networks will die.

And this brings me to one last point… Hulu. Guys, open up access. Track viewer habits. Analyze the metrics. Then sell it back to your advertisers. People might not love commercials, but they definitely watch them. Mostly because they’re too lazy to do anything about them.

I’m pretty sure that what consumers hate most is paying bundled rates for channels they don’t want, restrictive scheduling practices, and not being in control. Listen to your consumers. Learn about what they’re doing and change the way you do business. Set up your network distribution properly and no one will ever need a Tivo or PVR again. This is a new era of media consumption where the viewer controls their access. Figure it out and we all win.

Got a minute? Take our Free TV survey.

Resources:
Make an AppleTV Patchstick
How To Install AppleTV Patchstick
Boxee Setup on AppleTV
XBMC Setup on AppleTV

Software:
Transmission
TVshows
Ted
TVNZB

Over The Air HD Info & Equipment:
Free TV in Toronto
Digital Home Forum
Save And Replay Equipment Sales
Sensuz Equipment Sales

(UPDATE) OTA Station Listings:
US – FCC database search
US – Transition Plans by City
Canada – Available OTA stations

p>. Follow *3beat* on Twitter.

Last week, when Viacom demanded that YouTube pull down more than 100,000 clips, including content from BET, MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount Films, we knew something was up.

Turns out that Viacom had simply chosen another dance partner—Joost, the so-called “YouTube killer” video site created by the people behind both Skype and Kazaa.

Joost is still in beta, but the guys behind it have some serious pedigree going for them. Unlike YouTube, Joost will be focused long-format video rather than the bite-sized stuff typically found on YouTube. It’s also claiming that it’s a closed and highly secure system, making it easier to nab people who redistribute content illegally. That obviously makes it attractive to companies like Viacom, who are looking for more control over how their stuff is presented and distributed.

Content will still all be free, as Joost will be sustained by advertising. On the basis of this deal alone, it’s now got serious juice as an advertising platform, and I’m interested to see how that gets handled. I haven’t heard too many specific details on Joost’s advertising model.

For its TV properties, my fear is that Viacom will offer its content as it does on television: with commercial interruptions. Basically, it would just be regular TV on a different screen. That would be a serious miss. The whole reason people are online is to avoid that model entirely. That’s why pre-roll advertising is problematic as well.

Instead of using Joost as an internet-based TV network, Viacom would do well to use this as an opportunity to rethink everything they do—right down to the way they create their shows to begin with.

Consider an example using another medium: the DVD. When I watch my DVD version of Chappelle’s Show, I find myself massively irritated that they leave in the “we’ll be right back/welcome back” footage that happens around the commercial breaks. The commercials themselves aren’t on the DVD. The show is cutting back and forth from point A back to point A with nothing in between. So even though the commercials aren’t even there, I’m reminded—on a DVD that I paid for—how much I hate them. (Don’t even get me started about the fact that Viacom didn’t secure rights to rebroadcast some of Chappelle’s musical guests, leaving me waiting for great performances that never end up happening on the DVD version—which, again, I actually went out and paid for.)

If Viacom doesn’t rethink its busted model as it moves forward with Joost, they’ll have missed a big opportunity. Like DVDs, the Internet channel should no longer be seen as the place where TV content can simply be retrofitted to squeeze out some extra cash. It has to be part of the plan right out of the gate.

Here’s hoping they truly understand that.