Last week Old Spice made some funny videos. Maybe you’ve heard about it?
Of course you have.
Now it is apparently time for you to learn from it, as you undoubtedly hope to be the next Old Spice-like thing that all the kids are talking about on the internets. But I’m going to go out on a limb and say it is very unlikely that Old Spice’s success can be replicated by you, or anyone. And I’m not saying that because I think Old Spice’s campaign was some perfect storm that wasn’t meant to take off like it did; it was clearly a well-engineered piece of awesome. And I’m not saying that we’ll never see a wildly popular campaign like this ever again; we will. But it won’t be anything like the Old Spice campaign because we’ve already seen that.
So in the same vein as all these guides to doing what Old Spice did, here is a list of reasons why you won’t create the next internet sensation:
1. You’re trying too hard. Your audience can smell desperation a mile away. The minute you set out to be the next big thing, you lose all sense of what works and what doesn’t for you and your product.
2. You’re not creative. There’s nothing interesting about what you’re saying or how you say it. Flash and sizzle can be nice, but if they’re only there to mask the epic boredom your campaign brings the viewer, it’s more of an incentive for the viewer to switch off.
3. You’re not funny. This may be the most important reason of all. It’s hard to be funny. It’s hard to know what’s going to make people (not just a few people, lots of people) laugh. It’s even harder to be funny in a way that no one else has tried before.
Experts can dissect the reasons why Old Spice’s campaign was a hit; they can talk about influencers and SEO and viral content until they’re blue in the face. But it all comes down to this: Old Spice did something funny, and they did it well, and they did it at the right time, and they did it in the right way, and now because of that, you cannot do what they did. Imitators will bore us at the very best, anger us at the very worst.
Study Old Spice if you like. Learn all you can about their successes. Apply what is relevant to your own work if you can. But don’t worry about creating the next The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. Someone already did that.
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