Advertising Is Content, Content Is Advertising, I’m On A Horse

For anyone watching the Olympics lately (despite the efforts of NBC — really, NBC? Why air one of the most anticipated events of the games on MSNBC?! ), you may have seen this engaging Old Spice commercial where a man is magically transported from his bathroom, to a boat, and finally to a horse. The commercial was actually interesting enough for me to stop my TiVo and replay it twice when I first saw it.



The commercial itself has garnered over 2.5 million views on YouTube — and that’s just for the “official” version, there are many other accounts that have uploaded the commercial, which Old Spice has wisely not asked to be taken down (yet?). This serves as a fantastic reminder of a point that we’ve illustrated here before: advertising is content, and content is advertising. When you make a fantastic commercial like Old Spice did, not only do people actually seek out your commercial to see it, but they discuss it as well. I know personally that I have had no less than 10 discussions amongst my friends about the commercial. In fact, Leo Laporte’s video, where he interviews the creators of the commercial about how it was done, has gotten over 100k views.



The big question is, however, how effective this ad was for actually increasing the sales of Old Spice.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story