Twilight Eclipse is being heralded as the "best yet". Michael Douglas' ex-wife is demanding $ for Wall Street 2, claiming spin-offs (for which her divorce contract stipulates compensation) and sequels are one in the same. And the Old Spice "man your man could smell like" is back in his own right.
The rule of thumb for sequel success goes something like this. If it's worse than the first, it's a failure. If it's as good as the first, it's not quite good enough. And if it's better than the first, it's a huge hit and opens the door for a series.
For me, the latest from Old Spice delivers somewhere in between 'as good as' and 'better than' its predecessor.
The first spot was heroic largely because it was completely fresh for the category. For starters, it leveraged an insight that hadn't been tapped - or at least not approached with the tone & manner seen here - this notion of appealing to women's sense of desire and suggesting their significant other could become more desirable by using Old Spice products. A far fetched premise indeed, but the stuff fantasies are built upon.
The cheesy soap opera thing works here, and in fact, sets the stage perfectly for more.
Really, can you ever appeal too much to a women's sense of desire? Of course not. So, just the very fact that there is a sequel, makes this great. It's a bold move that suggests this wasn't a one-off, but a statement about who we are as a brand. For that alone, I give the Old Spice team a big high five.
So what's next? Women will run out and buy Old Spice for their boyfriends and husbands. But then it becomes a matter of whether or not the guy wants to smell like this guy. That might be Old Spice's next challenge... to convince men the chicks who want them to smell like this guy are worth it. So, yes, the Axe strategy, which is exactly the opposite of this.
For now, the strategy follows the purse strings and that makes this ON STRATEGY part 2.
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