Brandweek, January 8, 2007

Strategy: P&G Refreshes Old Spice Image to Attract Axe Guys; Product Invokes 70 Years of ‘Experience’ Via Sexy Update

In the battle for young male consumers in the grooming products category, Procter & Gamble is banking on the 70-year heritage of Old Spice to separate it from the competition, namely Unilever's Axe, as well as its own Tag line.

"Experience is everything," Old Spice's first effort via Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore., targets 12-24 year-olds—slightly younger than the "1-800-Prove-It" campaign that launched in 1993 (via previous agency Saatchi & Saatchi, New York). "Prove-It" ran in various iterations for 13 years and successfully distanced the product from its grandfatherly image. But "Experience" embraces Old Spice's heritage with humor and double entendres to establish itself as an authority when it comes to the "experiences" young guys seek.

The first TV spot, which broke over the weekend during the NFL playoffs, feeds off Old Spice's iconic imagery. A middle-age man wearing yachting garb is in a room filled with pictures of classic sailing vessels. "If you have it, you don't need it," he says. "If you need it, you don't have it . . . The point is, if you've never had any of it, people just seem to know it." One print execution has actress Faye Dunaway near a roaring fireplace with the text, "If your grandfather hadn't worn it, you wouldn't exist." Another is a blueprint on how to unhook bra clasps.

"Old Spice is synonymous with 'Prove-It' and being a product that is known to work with a money-back guarantee," said Carl Stealy, brand manager at Old Spice, Cincinnati. "But with any great advertising campaign, you run it and run it and at some point, you need a new twist to it."

Budget was not disclosed. Old Spice spent $54 million on media January-October 2006, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

Old Spice High Endurance is third (behind Degree and Secret) in the $1.1 billion deodorant category (excluding Wal-Mart) with $63 million in sales in food, drug and mass merchants for the 52 weeks ending Dec. 3, per IRI. Old Spice Red Zone is eighth ($49 million), Axe 11th ($36 million).

Axe holds the top spot in the male body spray category with $71 million in sales; followed by Tag (a unit of Gillette, acquired by P&G in 2005, which is managed separately from Old Spice) with $21 million in sales and 30% growth for the period; and Old Spice, up 5.5% to $10 million. However, Axe decreased 4.3%, its first drop since it was introduced in the U.S. in 2002.

"This is the first time we are seeing some [sales] softness in the trend," said Leigh Anne Rowinski, beauty expert at IRI, Chicago. "An ongoing question is whether body spray, which was not even a product form in the U.S. before 2002, will have sustaining power with a new generation of young men. As they have grown up, will the next set of 11- and 12-year olds take to it?"

According to Gary Stibel, founder and CEO, New England Consulting, Westport, Conn., "Old Spice and Axe have left most of their competitors in the dust. But Old Spice is not digging in its heels. It is planning to grow, staying on its tip-toes in the antiperspirant category."