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Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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What we can learn from the Old Spice response campaign without being copycats

Copycats were expected in the wake of the Old Spice response campaign, in which the Old Spice Man responded to tweets with brief YouTube videos. After all, despite a few party poopers who didn’t like the campaign and a few misguided claims that the campaign didn’t produce results, ad agency Weiden & Kennedy has shown that the campaign, including the Twitter-YouTube effort, has paid off in a big way:

We weren’t disappointed. Daniel Frelich has produced a television commercial that parodies the Old Spice Man in his campaign to unseat Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy in the upcoming primary election. Cisco Systems took a crack at the response campaign while paying homage to the Old Spice success, as characterized in the example below:

More copycats, parodies and outright ripoffs of Weiden & Kennedy’s creative campaign are inevitable. Unfortunately, most organizations are missing a huge opportunity that the Weiden & Kennedy—unwittingly, perhaps—has uncorked.

The online social world is one of mixed media. It was not always this way. When blogs were the center of the social media universe, a blogger wrote an article and readers commented directly on the blog. It was a neat, packaged model for interaction. As more diverse social tools infiltrated the Web, comments became disassociated from the source material. A blog post could inspire comments on Twitter, Facebook or a number of other channels. Marketers began to complain about how difficult it was to track engagement.

What companies should learn from the Old Spice response campaign is that it’s entirely fair—and probably effective—to respond to customers in a forum other than the one where they initiated the conversation.

Organizations increasingly are tapping into Twitter for customer service. Comcast kicked off the trend with ComcastCares, but these days even some of the major airlines are getting into the game. Yet it doesn’t seem to have occurred to anybody that a query from Twitter doesn’t need to be answered entirely on Twitter. Why not YouTube?

The best response to some customer inquiries and complaints could be visual; text could be inadequate. With the increased use of inexpensive digital cameras like the Flip and the Kodak Zi8, along with screencast software like Camtasia, GoView and Jing, customer service and tech support departments could quickly knock out a video that responds to a tweet, post it to YouTube, then respond via Twitter with a link to the video.

I’m not talking about trying to be funny or clever or support an advertising campaign. Instead, I’m talking about a true dialogue, real engagement. Here’s a scenario:

An unhappy customer of a wireless company tweets that he’s having trouble with his phone. Through routine monitoring, the company sees the complaint. One customer service rep grabs her Flip and shoots another rep tapping his way through the screens required to solve the problem.

In the unrehearsed video, the customer service rep would say, “Hi, Mary. We understand you can’t get your Acme smartphone to connect to WiFi, so I’m going to walk you through the steps you need to take to fix this problem.” At the end of the video, he could add that Mary should let them know if this fix doesn’t work so they can continue to troubleshoot.

The video would then be uploaded to a YouTube channel dedicated to customer support responses; alternatively, the company could set up a customer service playlist in its primary YouTube channel.

For software issues, a quick screencast could do the trick.

Then, the company would reply on Twitter with a message like, “We have a video showing you how to solve your problem: shortened URL here.”

In a mixed-media environment like the web, there should be no reason to confine ourselves to a single medium to respond to customers. I’m surprised I haven’t seen anybody doing this yet, but it’s only a matter of time before some company realizes that the real lesson of the Old Spice response campaign isn’t that you need to be funny and clever, but rather that you need to help your customers using the best medium.

Let me know if you’re aware of an organization already taking this approach.

08/16/10 | 9 Comments | What we can learn from the Old Spice response campaign without being copycats

Comments

  • 1.What a great idea that is Shel! I'm going to be watching here to see if anyone responds because I too would be very interested in hearing about companies who may already be doing this and how it is working for them!

    Kristen | August 2010 | Toronto, Canada

  • 2."What companies should learn from the Old Spice response campaign is that it?s entirely fair?and probably effective?to respond to customers in a forum other than the one where they initiated the conversation."

    You hit the nail on the head with this, Shel. We still hear about companies worried that they'll lose control when they use social media. But they didn't really have control over where people talked about them to begin with.

    By going where their audiences are, they have so many more opportunities to engage with and cultivate them.

    Yes, it might be disappointing to find the "killer" conversation platform they thought they were using isn't performing as well as they'd like it to.

    But it's also an opportunity to figure out how to start using it better, and if that still doesn't work, junk it and save time and money.

    Shonali Burke | August 2010

  • 3.I like the idea of cross medium company response strategies, but for some reason it doesn't seem that feasible.

    Even if someone tweeted the problem and the company's response is on youtube they would still then have to put the pieces together.

    In general the whole presence of corporations in web settings is disingenuous and transparent.

    Steve | August 2010

  • 4.What a great video on Old Spice! That is classic SEO right there. I love the YouTube response channel they set up.

    Rock Star Diva | August 2010

  • 5.Steve, I'm confused by your comment. First, the consumer who tweeted the original question or complaint would receive a reply via Twitter with a shortened URL leading to the video. Isn't that "putting the pieces together?"

    Second, "disingenuous and transparent" don't seem to go together. Organizational presence in "web settings" (do you mean social media channels?) is what consumers are asking for according to multiple studies, so it's not disingenuous. And transparency is a good thing, isn't it?

    Shel Holtz | August 2010 | West Hills, CA

  • 6.It's definitely a brilliant idea that I think that customers would react to in an extremelyt positive way.

    The only problem is when it comes to privacy and security of either software or tech support issues. Maybe allowing for specific customers to access videos in a private manner would help this issue?

    Saxby | August 2010 | Sydney, Aus

  • 7.Saxby, I see this as a simple exercise of judgment. Just as some of the replies to consumer queries are taken to Direct Message or even the phone in order to address privacy -- particularly where it's a compliance issue -- I wouldn't suggest this approach when dealing with an issue that is personal in nature. This would only apply where the answer to the question is generic -- that is, a lot of people could have the same question or problem -- and the video would be useful to a wider audience.

    Shel Holtz | August 2010

  • 8.Not to put words in his mouth, but I wonder if Steve meant to say "disingenously transparent" rather than "disingenuous AND transparent." I'm still not sure if that makes sense - but, basically, a fake sense of transparency??

    I admit that I've felt this way on many occasions. My organization wants our PR/web teams to help monitor mentions of our company online. When it's a positive mention, we're fairly free to answer as we see fit. And yet, when it's a negative mention, that transparency goes by the wayside, only to be replaced by canned rhetoric.

    It's unfortunate and frustrating, to say the least - as I can't seem to convince the higher-ups (and the ones signing my paycheck) that people can see right through such B.S. and that the social space is much more forgiving to REAL responses from REAL people (i.e. ComcastCares, etc.) rather than an organization that puts up a facade of transparency.

    (off topic a bit, I know ... but still wanted to chime in)

    Jen | August 2010

  • 9.hey shel, I did mean their presence in social media, I was thinking more along the lines of the corporate sponsored "viral" videos which i think are transparent.

    I haven't read the research, so as far as demand for this kind of communication goes I could be totally wrong, to me it just doesn't seem like id want corporations in my social media.

    Steve | August 2010

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