The Gift That Keeps On Giving...

Social media has arrived.  It's achieved critical mass.  Old Spice spokesman and now bonafide celebrity, Isaiah Mustafa has helped reinvigorate a brand that has languished in the male grooming products category for years.  With Mustafa's contribution, in addition to the brilliant ad agency behind this campaign -- Wieden + Kennedy, this Proctor & Gamble brand has seen an increase of sales to the tune of 107 percent.  Quite the feat.

Or is it?

Per AdAge, with SymphonyIRI, "(Old Spice) has been consistently gaining market share, even though that's only been enough to erase a deficit for the brand built up earlier.  In the 52 weeks ended June 13, it had a roughly flat share in a category that grew a robust 8.6 percent." 

Further, "Some other men's brands also have been making substantial share gains of late, including P&G sibling Gillette and Beierdorf's Nivea. And the thing Old Spice, Gillette and Nivea have in common isn't Mr. Mustafa, but rather multiple national drops of high-value coupons.  They included buy-one, get-one-free offers from both P&G brands and up to $4 off a single bottle of Nivea Men from Beiersdorf, reflecting unprecedented levels of promotional intensity in the category."

All these stats are a bit hard to swallow -- especially given all the ads we've seen, and yes, enjoyed.  We were engaged.  In fact Mustafa and company shot a series of 186 clips -- a two-day marathon of YouTube personalized videos in answer to Tweets from Old Spice's popular Twitter feed.  The videos generated more than 34 million aggregate views and a billion PR impression in a week, according to P&G.  In a single week, views of the personalized ads surpassed the nearly 29 million viral video views of Mr. Mustafa's four TV ads since February.

I could go on, but bottom line is P&G has won with a carefully crafted campaign, some say gift, that's created awareness, watercooler worthiness and just plain old enjoyment.  We have been and will continue to talk about Old Spice as long as they keep up the good work.  Some of us even buy the products.

And that's really what it's all about, right?

YouTube Dips Toe and $5M into Content Creators...

Looks like Google via YouTube wants to help some of its more prolific and brand identified content creators create, well... better content.

They've created a $5 million fund to assist producers who may not have the wherewithal to upgrade production values with equipment, actors, writers, even directors.  The first class to participate is by invitation only.  Google will roll out the invites to a broader audience if this model proves to be successful.

And to be fair, Google's not doing this out of the kindness of their hearts.  There's much money to be made here.  Display advertising, a $20 billion business, is something Google wants a bigger piece of.  Google is on track to book as much as $600 million, all of it from display advertising -- on YouTube.

For more specifics, read the AdAge article here -- http://bit.ly/aJHz8Z

Let's hope other video distributors will be just as incentivized to help their producers help them.