Liquid Creativity

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The art of selling today

You may have seen on YouTube, along with 100 million other viewers, the Old Spice video that became an absolute hit. It shows the power of viral advertising and how creativity and entertainment can promote a product.

At face value, Old Spice is a bodywash that smells nice and gets you clean, nothing special or significant to sell. So, given this brand is bought by an older, traditional male market how did they connect with young people? The answer is, by creating an entertaining and engaging story. This is relevant to all forms of advertising but in this case, Old Spice used video as the medium to spread their new story of coolness and desire. 

 


If a video is quirky and memorable people will spread the word very quickly. Advertising has now morphed into entertainment. These videos are not forced upon people, like conventional advertising, people actually seek them out.

This is an especially great way to connect to the younger demographic, which is exactly the strategy behind the Old Spice campaign. The videos can be a source of fun, something to show their peers. It’s all about engagement, but the consumer now has more control over their level of interaction with brands.

Advertisers now sell a feeling rather than the attributes of a product or service. New technologies are transforming advertising. Not only are there more ways to present campaigns that also deliver online feedback but there are now ways for consumers to edit out TV ads.

Young people want to be involved in creating, contributing to or influencing the advertising process. Cadbury along with other companies have involved people in their campaigns by inviting them to make their own TV ads. Cadbury received 12,000 submissions from Australians when invited them to film themselves eating a Picnic bar.

Today the essence of an effective campaign is to be ‘engaging’ and ‘entertaining’. It’s all about establishing a two-way relationship that interacts with the consumer.

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