Reality: Old Spice sales are down since ad campaign began | Hacker News Reader

Reality: Old Spice sales are down since ad campaign began

tv.yahoo.com

32 pointscwan51 comments

Forbes contradicts this (http://tinyurl.com/2exqhg7). Here's the quote...

And, perhaps, persuasive. Total sales for Old Spice body wash at supermarkets, drugstores and mass market retailers excluding Wal-Mart were up 16.7% in the 52-week period ending June 13, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago-based market research firm.

So the yahoo article is singling out the one sub-brand of body wash in the Old Spice Man's hand (which is down) but the brand itself seems to be up. Now I don't know about the rest of you but I didn't even notice what specific type of Old Spice Body Wash he was holding and I don't think others had either. So I don't think that specific sub-brand's falling sales reflect on the ads at all.

(To give the appropriate plug I actually found the forbes link via this site: http://tinyurl.com/27d9aer)

This makes more sense to me. It would be very surprising if what I think one of the most engaging ad campaigns in recent memory had a NEGATIVE impact on sales.

Not saying it happened here, but one way this could happen is if the ad campaign alienated a large segment of the brand's existing consumer base.

When did they start running the ads? That increase could have been at the beginning of that year-long period.

The first ad in the series ran during the Super Bowl in February.

I love the Old Spice Guy and I never picked up on a specific product he was pitching, just the brand itself.

On the other hand, in Terry Crews' commercials for Old Spice Odor Blocker (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tI4CbCniBI for instance), they're funny commercials but they're for a specific product - Odor Blocker Body Wash - and they make a specific claim - block B.O. for 1 hours. I loved the commercials so I tried it out, and it worked as claimed so it's now the one I buy every time. It was the most positive advertising experience I've had in as long as I can remember.

Came here to point out the same facts.

Score another one for the awesome, new media who can't be bothered to fact-check or research for even 5 minutes.

edit: Mod me down if you wish, but the sales statistics quoted were for a period BEFORE the damn commercials even started running. A simple 5 minute check would have caught that.

In all fairness to the team behind this, they're obviously trying to cross the product over into a new demographic. If Old Spice's existing demographic is dying off, there can be a huge payoff if they succeed in making it hip and ironic. Remember the Black Label campaigns in the 90s? That succeeded in turning a moribund beer brand into a hip brand. It's worth swinging the bat a few times over the next five years to see if they can do something with Old Spice.

I guess they should have used the occasion to say "oh by the way, we are now called 'young spice'".

Isn't it way too early to tell what the effects of the campaign are?

I for one had never heard of Old Spice before, still haven't actually seen their product (not so prevalent here), but I do look out for it when I go to buy deodarant, since I want to try it out.

Last time I "tried" Old Spice I got a rash. They make crappy deodorant. It's okay if you're used to it but if you switch prepare for the worst. For some reason I've found this to be more common with Old Spice rather than any other deodorant brand.

What do you mean with "tried"? What did you actually do with it?

Tried as in used it once and then threw it away because I got a rash. I sometimes get it when I don't have deodorant and am in a new location and the convenience store only carries Old Spice for some reason and I'm in too much of a rush to care.

Everyone's different. This person is just as likely to get a rash from your favorite deodorant as they are Old Spice. There's nothing inherently wrong with Old Spice.

This is not explicitly true. Old Spice products use aluminum compounds in their deodorants aluminum based compounds especially when as fine as they are in deodorant are generally an irritant and a poison for your body. It's been proven to cause Alzheimers. I use Adidas 24 Hour control which doesn't contain aluminum.

It's common to be allergic to aluminum.

Fair enough but I just think it's a little dishonest to call out Old Spice when many deodorants contain aluminum and you have an allergy. It just seems you could have made this post initially and that anyone in your shoes would already know to factor it in.

True my original post is a bit harsh. The point is Old Spice is like the Burger King of deodorants, yeah there are McDonalds but McDonalds didn't have a recent gigantic/viral ad campaign with a now popular figure.

The old spice container I have shows no aluminum in the ingredients list... care to revise or elucidate?

Alumimum is commonly found in most (all?) anti-perspirants. It's definitely not something limited to Old Spice. If you want to avoid aluminum, you'll probably have to stick to using deodorants that are not also anti-perspirants -- it might be the case that Old Spice doesn't sell anything like this.

Old Spice definitely does sell deodorant and it doesn't have aluminum. Here are the ingredients on the back of mine (Pure Sport High Endurance - which seems to work for me): Dipropylene Glycol, Water, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Stearate, Fragrance, Ppg-3 Myristyl Ether, Triclosan, Tetrasodium Edta, Sodium Hydroxide, D&c Violet No. 2, D&c Green No. 6.

Aluminum has not been proven that aluminum causes Alzheimer's...

Many other deodorants use aluminum as well, Old Spice is hardly unique in that regard.

I've gotten a rash from just about every deodorant on the market after half a container or so. The only ones I trust are the simple white cake ones. And they usually say 'dermatologist tested' since they require a gimmick to be sold.

I wish we could go back to when nobody wore the stuff.

> I wish we could go back to when nobody wore the stuff.

Have you ever been on a crowded train?

There are plenty of places in the world where your dream could become a reality.

You could have contact dermatitis (skin allergy) when exposed to aluminum.

You might want to try a crystal body deodorant, such as this (or an equivalent brand):

http://www.thecrystal.com/crystal_story.cfm

Costs about $5 or $6. I got mine at my local drug store (if yours doesn't carry it, try a health food kinda store). They're supposed to last at least a year.

I made the switch about 4 months ago and am happy with it.

One thing to note is that that's only a deodorant, not an antiperspirant. It certainly helps prevent smells with no lingering perfume, but that's it.

I tried the Crystal deodorant and was happy with it, but I had to switch back to my regular antiperspirant because sweating led to chafing, not body odor (I shower 1-2x a day). If I wasn't concerned about sweating (cold day at home, no workout), I'd probably use the Crystal stuff again.

Lay off the dairy and it becomes less of a necessity. You do need to wash the pits very well at least once a day if you're going to even attempt this, though.

My first instincts are to assume this is a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" statement. Just because sales are falling doesn't mean the commercial is ineffective. After all, how do you know that sales wouldn't be down 14% without the ads?

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, Latin for "after this, therefore because of this", is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) which states, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

If that's the case then you can say the commercial is ineffective, because you can say that the commercial didn't raise sales. You can never conclusively say that the commercial raised sales when they're up or lowered sales when they're down, but the commercial surely didn't raise sales when they're down.

For those who are downvoting me, care to explain why I deserve it? Where am I wrong?

If sales would have been -14% without the commercial but are only -7% with the commercial, then the commercial did raise sales. You measure vs. the counterfactual baseline, the one where the rest of the world is held constant but you don't take the action that you're measuring.

You seem to have missed the point of the question "After all, how do you know that sales wouldn't be down 14% without the ads?".

The commercial is not the only thing affecting sales. If there is some other factor driving sales down strongly the sales may still fall overall even if the commercial is successful (i.e. attracted a large number of sales).

I see. My point was that good advertising should increase sales not slow the decrease of sales. But I guess when you're running a business that's tanking the OP would be correct in calling the ad effective.

This really is a poor article.

It's not stated if that's a new product or an established one they are talking about. Also, whilst they say one product is down, what about the others? If you dig into the bnet article (http://industry.bnet.com/advertising/10007535/the-old-spice-...) you see that the sales figures are for the 52 weeks upto the 13 June - long before the online campaign started.

All the yahoo video links fail to load properly for me. The mention YouTube but don't link to it all. They link to their own previous coverage for no good reason.

Conventional advertising wisdom revolves around brand awareness. Old Spice just got millions of people to say "Old Spice" to their friends a hundred times a day each with a big happy smile on their face. If sales are down, I'd bet its anomalous and/or too soon to tell. Look at the numbers six months to a year from now.

This is the irony of most internet advertising campaigns. Media Buyers (the people who organize ad campaigns) are graded on three things: -Brand Awareness (how many people see it) -CPM/Cost Per Mille (how much the ad costs per 1000 impressions) -CTR/Click Thru Rate (how many people clicked on the ads)

Most ad campaigns have nothing to do with actually trying to drive product and most ad agencies are not tied to incentives surrounding product sales.

No advertising campaign is going to make people rush into their bathroom, throw away all their old supplies, and rush out and buy new ones. You'd need to look at least a few months of sales to determine how successful it was.

>Are the women targeted by the ads not actually the ones making body-wash-related decisions for the men in their life?

Those ads are clearly not targeted at women.

Neither are their products. :( As a woman, the ads amused me so much that I was tempted to buy one of their products, but it was the fairly masculine scents that put me off. If Old Spice ever sold unscented products (looks like they did at some point, then gave up on those..), or products with more feminine scents, I'd probably try it at least once just because of the social media success.

> perfect example of the male body

Ha! I must spend too much time around weightlifters/powerlifters. He looked a little scrawny to me.

Another interesting case of internet popularity not translating into sales was "Snakes on a Plane". From wikipedia:

""" Due to the Internet hype surrounding the film, industry analysts estimated the film's opening box office to be between US$20 million and US$30 million.[4] While Snakes on a Plane did narrowly beat Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby for the number one position during its opening weekend, it did not meet these estimates and grossed only $US15.25 million in its opening days, a disappointment for New Line Cinema. ""

While I admire powerlifters, I wouldn't consider an extremely muscular body aesthetically perfect. My man crush is on athletes who are muscular but not extremely so, like Greg Louganis, Rafer Johnson, or Roger Federer.

Federer can carry my bags any day ;-)

I never said that powerlifters were perfect. There are obviously many attractive body types. And almost anything is more attractive than the fat standard. Physical beauty is pretty small thing. We all get old. It matters a lot more what you create and how you treat children.

I was just making a little observation about how much perspective matters. No insult was intended for the gentlemen in question. It's just that after hanging around with powerlifters I probably would call someone with a bigger chest/shoulders perfect.

But downvote away! I have karma to burn.

I save my downvotes for comments that lower the quality of discourse. Disagreeing with me in many cases raises the level of intelligence of a discussion even if I don't personally like it :-)

> I save my downvotes for comments that lower the quality of discourse.

Interesting strategy. I usually reserve mine for people who use ruby.

> I usually reserve mine for people who use ruby.

Downvote away! I have karma to burn. ;-)

I agree. And Isaiah Mustafa (the actor) is a former wide receiver in the NFL, so he's got an athlete's body.

Either way, when your ad campaign is the most remarkable thing about your product you still have a problem.

Coca-Cola seems to be doing fine though.

What's remarkable about any of their competitors?

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