Old Spice Guy has competition

The internets are abuzz with praise, wonder, and hearty LOLs over a savvy online marketing campaign for Old Spice by ad firm Wieden+Kennedy.

Old Spice Guy appears in a number of YouTube videos, and creates response videos to high-profile bloggers, Twitterers, and "internet influencers." Like my friend Susannah Breslin, who'd written about the campaign previously. And Alyssa Milano, Demi More, Ellen DeGeneres, Apollo Ohno, Ashton Kutcher, and the glamorous babes at Gizmodo (hello, girls!)

Everyone loves linklove, and so those he shouts out tweet and blog about having been shouted out, and a potent meme spreads. [ Read more here about how the ads are created. ] I agree with popular consensus: it's one of the most cleverly executed online ad campaigns ever. I have laughed at each one of the videos I've seen. And I now have a crush on Old Spice Guy, actor Isaiah Mustafa. And a nascent foam fetish.

But Old Spice Guy now has competition. His name is @OhDoctah. My heart be still. This is quite possibly the best YouTube video of all time. Watch the video here.

When I watch the video, I see this inside my mind.

(Thanks, Quinn, and @Beschizza. Disclaimer: I was paid to speak at an "A plus K" event earlier this year, but they didn't tell me anything about this campaign, or ask me to blog this, or recompense me in any way for doing so. However, I do admit I wrote this post with secret hope Old Spice Guy would video at me. Or @ohdoctah. A girl can dream.)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Tim

The sad thing is that I was going to something similar to that video this weekend when I had the time.

Now it just feels derivative. :(
- Beryllium
  
  Heh, I also had the thought to do something similar – although my idea was to use a pasty white slightly chubby guy (me) to do a completely terrible spoof of the ad, but replacing the product with Axe.
  
  Because Axe’s advertising sucks, and it’s really kind of demeaning.
  
  But this is an even better sendup of an ad (and the demeaningness is a more specific and focused critique) …
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvpO4Ll-rXg
  
  (spoofs this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_zwft9VMP0 )
- Anonymous
  
  That’s comcast isn’t it? (the commercials where people say they have already invented things that already exist but haven’t released them yet)
  
  Trevor
Hoot

Something about the way this guy talks . . . I’m burning up!
Teller

Wouldn’t surprise me if Wieden did that, too.
- Xeni Jardin
  
  heh. i don’t think that’s the case, but they are very savvy folks.
tarabrown

He’s right. I do prefer a duvet and high thread count. Plus, I do like free installation.
Xeni Jardin

mmmm, free installation.
Anonymous

Not enough LOL’s in this guy’s internetz.
autopilot

Look – that was good and everything, but most ladies I know like to have the largest breasts in their relationship.
Anonymous

Yes, that was funny, but, giant manboobs…permanently..etched…into…brain… :-o
Antinous / Moderator

The Ellen Degeneres one was quite funny.
lorq

Hilarious video!

Belated thanks also for recent Flying Lotus post. Great stuff.
- Xeni Jardin
  
  glad you enjoyed.
thatbob

Besides being smart and funny, the ad team’s biggest achievement might be recognizing that the target audience for men’s hygiene products includes women. Sort of like Viagra sales being, ahem, limp when Bob Dole was a spokesman, but going through the roof when they started placing ads in women’s magazines. Which is all something the Axe ads don’t get. Whenever I use my shower gel (which is actually Old Spice) my girlfriend quips that I “smell like gold chains.”
Anonymous

A savvy online marketing campaign. My grandad in the UK always used Old Spice scent and splashed it all over.
bklynchris

Are those Xeni’s gleamin’ choppers smiling back at us?
- Xeni Jardin
  
  mmmmmaybe.
BCK

Nice to see him sampling the Heineken Lady Music commercials too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0rWe6HYx18
- Ohdoctah
  
  and do you know where Heineken got it from … the SNL Ladies Man lol
braininavat

Prince is right – the internet is over!
Anonymous

Nipples! Who wants pancakes!
Dave Faris

Since technology accelerates over time, The Old Spice campaign proves that we’ll eventually get to the point where instead of being fed up with a meme in a mere couple of days, we’ll be sick of it before it even happens.
- Anonymous
  
  http://www.youtube.com/oldspice#p/c/484F058C3EAF7FA6/0/nFDqvKtPgZo
  
  Game over, From oldspice. Good timing to end the campaign.
nanite2000

I honestly can’t remember laughing so hard as I did with this video. Total genius. I wonder if it was also marketed by Old Spice…?

Anyhoo – EMJ (#17): I can’t tell if your post is intended to be read with my tongue firmly in my cheek, but I’ll just assume it is. The though that you might actually be serious is the total antithesis of this video.
3eff_jeff

Thank you, Xeni and OhDoctah. That was awesome. I thought it was hilarious.

(For the record: I love the original commercial, and I normally hate advertisements. I also own and use Old Spice Aftershave.)
Anonymous

So this is how the US economy works.

An unemployed guy, who has no PhD and is no doctor but invokes being smart, jumps on the most popular meme to become popular himself?

I call this sort of people attention hackers, who – in our attention economy – try to ‘make it’ by doing the most obvious (I was just waiting for ‘somebody” to do this exact video-response).

He already annoyed me so much, to the point, that I stopped watching/listening to Leo Laporte’s TWIT, whenever he fills Leo’s couch,

Was it funny? I don’t think so, because there is nothing likeable about him, IMHO.

(Twitter: @buckybit )
Mario Carneiro Neto

You haven’t seen nothing until you’ve seen the Old SpiSe man…

http://twitter.com/oldspise

http://www.youtube.com/user/oldspiseman
Mitch

Put a bra on those man boobs. Unicorn chaser, please!
- IronEdithKidd
  
  I’ll second that motion.
  
  Unicorn. Stat!
seaanemoneman

OhDoctah MyDoctah
Chocolatey Shatner

I kind of liked this Old Spice spoof better. Not because of the misogyny, but because I thought the guy was cute.
- Ohdoctah
  
  that was funny and freaky lol at the same time
TheBlessedBlogger

I thought it was pretty funny and the guys weight didn’t bother me. Personally, I like my guys nerdy and a little chubby. Huge muscles freak me out and aren’t very snuggly and super skinny guys are all bone and hard angles.

P.S. I’m sorry Old Spice. Your commercials are great but I don’t want to make out with guys that smell like my grandpa. Ditto for Axe.