Old Spice: how a 33-second Super Bowl spot reset a 70-year-old brand
In February 2010, Wieden+Kennedy and P&G ran a 33-second Super Bowl spot starring Isaiah Mustafa. Old Spice had spent decades as the brand younger men associated with their grandfathers. The spot, plus a 48-hour live-response campaign five months later, repositioned the brand in months. Old Spice body-wash sales jumped sharply year-over-year.
- Story: In February 2010, Old Spice ran a 33-second Super Bowl spot starring Isaiah Mustafa — a horse, a boat, and a former NFL player — and overnight repositioned a brand most young men associated with their grandfathers. Five months later, the agency spent 48 hours filming 186 personalized video responses to people who tweeted at the brand.
- Why it matters: A lot of brands buy a Super Bowl ad and then go quiet for a year. Old Spice paired the hero spot with a live response engine and turned a one-day moment into weeks of free coverage. The two pieces only work together.
- Takeaway: Pair a hero spot with a real-time response engine. The original ad opens the conversation; the responses keep it going.
- Takeaway: Cast against your brand's current perception. Mustafa was the opposite of who Old Spice viewers expected to see.
- Takeaway: Treat the launch spot as the start of the conversation, not the end of it.
Old Spice — the four-step story
Old Spice at a glance
Quick facts
Where Old Spice was in 2009
By the late 2000s, Old Spice had a generational problem. The brand was associated with men over 50 — the deodorant your grandfather wore. Younger men were buying Axe, which had built a marketing machine aimed squarely at 18-to-24-year-old guys with body-spray ads that were obnoxious but effective. Old Spice was losing share fast in the category that actually drives growth: 18-to-34 men buying body wash.
P&G's structural insight was that women bought roughly 60% of men's body wash. The brand needed to talk to women about why their boyfriends, husbands, and dads should smell better — without alienating the existing male customer base. Wieden+Kennedy in Portland took on the assignment.
The hero spot
On February 4, 2010, the spot aired during the Super Bowl XLIV pre-game broadcast and immediately afterward. It featured Isaiah Mustafa, a former NFL player, addressing the camera in a single 33-second unbroken take while a series of impossible visual transitions happened around him — he's in a shower, then on a boat, then holding a diamond, then riding a horse. The voice-over was directed at women: "Look at your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn't me."
The spot was funny in a way Old Spice advertising had never been. It addressed women directly instead of trying to convince teenagers. And Mustafa's delivery — calm, slightly amused, completely in on the joke — was the opposite of the over-eager pitch most male-grooming ads used.
The response campaign
Five months after the original spot, Wieden+Kennedy and Old Spice did something that hadn't really been done before. Over a 48-hour window in July 2010, the team set up shop in a Portland studio and filmed 186 personalized video responses to people who tweeted at the brand. Mustafa, in character, answered tweets from celebrities, regular people, and a few brands. The videos were edited and uploaded in near-real-time.
By the end of the second day, the response campaign had pulled 40 million-plus views and dominated marketing and entertainment news coverage for the week. It turned the original Super Bowl spot from a one-day moment into weeks of free coverage and gave the Old Spice brand a sustained presence in conversations it had previously been excluded from.
What grew, and what came with it
P&G publicly described the sales lift on Old Spice body wash as significant year-over-year. The exact percentages reported online are often cherry-picked from favorable time windows and product cuts, but the directional impact — meaningful share recovery in a category P&G had been losing — is well established. Old Spice has remained a strong brand within P&G's grooming portfolio in the years since.
The campaign also won multiple Cannes Lions including Grand Prix recognition, and the response campaign is taught as the modern template for real-time creative response. Wieden+Kennedy has continued working with the brand and has extended the same voice in subsequent campaigns, though nothing has quite matched the 2010 cultural moment.
What other brands tried to copy
Plenty of brands have tried to replicate the response-campaign format. Most have failed to produce comparable engagement, for a few reasons:
- The original creative has to be strong enough that people actually want to interact with it. A weak hero spot followed by a clever response engine produces low-engagement responses to a campaign nobody cared about in the first place.
- Live response requires real production capacity. The Old Spice campaign had a full studio, the spokesman on set, multiple writers, and a fast editing pipeline. Most brands trying to copy the format have done it with text replies that don't carry the same impact.
- The character had to support the format. Mustafa's delivery was naturally suited to direct response. Mascots and CEOs typically aren't.
- Most copies happened too long after the original spot. The Old Spice response campaign came months later, but the brand had stayed visible in between. Brands that wait a year to follow up have to re-earn attention from scratch.
How RGM thinks about brand-voice resets
When clients want to reset a brand voice, the Old Spice case is useful as a structural example: cast against type (Mustafa was the opposite of the existing Old Spice customer's mental image), talk to the actual purchaser (women, in this category), and pair the hero spot with a sustained follow-up that extends the moment. The one big spot is necessary but not sufficient. The follow-up is what compounds the work.
The harder part is internal. Brand-voice resets require leadership that's willing to spend a real budget on creative that's a departure from the brand's historical positioning — and to defend the choice when sales don't move in the first month. P&G has the scale and the patience to do that. Most brands don't. The honest move is to assess whether the org will actually support the reset before commissioning the creative; if not, scale back the ambition and protect the relationship with the existing customer base instead.
Frequently asked questions
Did the original spot actually air during the Super Bowl?
Yes, but in the broadcast window around the game rather than during the main game itself. The spot aired on February 4, 2010 (pre-game) and was widely viewed and discussed in the days that followed, making the Super Bowl window the effective launch moment.
How long did the 48-hour response campaign actually take?
The campaign ran from July 13-15, 2010 — about 48 continuous hours of writing, filming, editing, and uploading from a Portland studio. The team produced 186 personalized video responses in that window.
What's the deal with the "+125% sales lift" number?
That figure circulates online but is cherry-picked from a favorable time window and product cut. P&G's public commentary described a meaningful and sustained year-over-year sales lift on Old Spice body wash, but the actual category-level numbers are more modest than the often-cited percentage suggests.
Who came up with the campaign?
Wieden+Kennedy Portland led the creative. The exact attribution within the agency has been described many times in interviews; the core team included Eric Kallman, Craig Allen, and others, with the response campaign being a collaborative real-time effort.
Has Old Spice tried similar campaigns since?
Yes, Wieden+Kennedy and Old Spice have continued to work in the same self-aware, slightly absurd brand voice across many campaigns. Nothing has quite matched the 2010 cultural moment, but the brand voice that came out of it has remained consistent for over a decade.
Sources & references
- Old Spice — The Man Your Man Could Smell Like (YouTube) — The original 2010 spot.
- Wieden+Kennedy — Agency of record for Old Spice.
- Cannes Lions 2010 awards (Old Spice work) — Industry-award context for the campaign and response work.