10 Ways That You Could Be Old & Spicy

I am in love with the Old Spice guy, the ad campaign, the way my friends and I are in some kind of competition to see who can find the funniest Old Spice video reply, and just, everything I’m finding out about people I’m connecting to because they like the Old Spice videos too, or got Old Spiced.

So, since everything has to be about small business, I have come up with some ways for us to do some Old Spice type stuff albiet on a smaller scale.

1. Have a limited amount of time where you invite people to ask you any question. Answer them in public, with humor, in a way that can be accessed and shared.

Basically this is what they’re doing. Yeah, they have the funds for a green room and a professional actor. But what’s stopping us from having, say, a podcast, where all we do is answer questions?

2. Make fun of yourself/your industry and let other people in on the joke.

The video above is a classic example.

3. Brand yourself. People who think branding doesn’t matter are clearly not watching these videos.

You can’t convince me that you don’t recognize the Old Spice jingle or logo right now.

4. Think of the best way you can achieve engagement and do it.

What’s engagement? It’s a fancy way of saying, connect to your audience in a real way that they can respond to, and, I would add, that you can measure.

Old Spice can count those comments and check them against sales during the period of their engagement and after. I would imagine that sales went up with the new commercials, and this is why they decided to get personal in the first place.

5. Pick a time period of up to 3 days. Pick a theme that truly strikes a cord with people who love you/ your product/ your services and keep producing content during that entire time period, then makes sure it gets distributed.

Not every video that the Old Spice guy has made is a home run. But they just keep cranking out those videos, happy with 300 views or 30,000.

6. Find the influential people in your circle. Engage with them.

I don’t just mean famous people. The gossips, the journalists, the hot Mom, the Soccer Dad, people who like to link to things. Whoever is debunking the power of the influential in social media has just been proven wrong in a HUGE way.

7. Combine hot trends.

The Old Spice commercial itself is widely shared on YouTube, by the Old Spice account. Take YouTube, add Twitter, mix with hot half-naked guy, shake well and you’ve got yourself a mega-trend.

8. Keep going until you run out of content, people start to hate you, another news story eclipses you, or you run out of money.

The Old Spice folks are STILL creating responses to public questions. If I were them, I’d ride it until I started to see a dip in traffic, then disappear for about a day and come up with something Epic that tops this stunt. Everyone is probably sitting there watching to see what they’ll do next.

9. Learn how to use the popular social media tools.

Think of how dead the Old Spice YouTube channel would be if they weren’t also on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere.

10. Follow “campaigns” like the one Old Spice is doing right now.

Obviously someone brilliant in social media (who you can read about in an article by Marshall Kirkpatrick on ReadWriteWeb) advised them what to do and worked closely with them on doing it. So find everything you can about them, as well as how and why they’re doing what they’re doing, and copy as many elements as you can, tweaking them to fit your business.

If you can afford it, heck, hire those same people.

Sure, it’ll be a me-too effort, but if it works, brings you publicity, helps people, or even makes them laugh, does it really matter where the idea came from?