Old Spice – The Ship that Sailed

Sometimes demonstrating words are enough to change the wheel of fortune of a brand and as quoted by Great Isaiah Mustafa, “Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady. I’m on a horse.” The Shulton Company, an original producer of Old Spice, was founded in 1934 by William Lightfoot Schultz and was a women’s fragrance in the inception. The first Old Spice product was a fragrance called Early American Old Spice for women, introduced in 1937. Followed by Old Spice for men in 1938. Along with shaving mugs and shaving soap for men, Shulton also made toiletries: after-shave talc, aftershave lotion and cologne for men. They also had a broad line of toiletries for women. Old Spice’s adoption of nautical theme or sailing ships remained as their holy trademark till now. Preferably the original design for the Old Spice bottle came from an antique apothecary bottle.

• The brand has been a perfect star in the marketing world since its lenticel’s period, like debossing of The Ship Mt. Vernon, which has an image as the only ship to appear sailing to the right, on the bottles of different products.
• Procter & Gamble purchased the Old Spice fragrances, Skin Care and Antiperspirant and Deodorant products from the Shulton Company in June 1990. Throughout the years, they have aimed to bring the best male grooming products to men of all ages but were becoming stale with the younger generation. To catch up with the changing market, they launched one of the most successful rebrands of the decade featuring new commercials, new packaging, a new site design with the introduction of “The Old Spice Guy” to the assortment of witty, comical commercials and must-see viral videos that began in July 2010, they garnered the attention of their target audience both on television and on social media networks.
• In 2006, a very unlikely partnership was established where P&G, the packaged giants, awarded its Old Spice brand to Wieden+Kennedy. Together they introduced the most successful campaign “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” which was a testament to a partnership built on faith and focused work.
• In the summer of 2011, they created along with the creative minds at Landor (A Marketing Agency) a campaign that would foster a strong relationship between Old Spice and its customers and together they shared the most overwhelming successful campaign award with more than 49 million views on YouTube.

Today Old Spice is one of the most accepted deodorants and body wash among huge potential customers. Old Spice and Wieden + Kennedy launched a campaign in 2008, which was the 2010 Silver Effie Winner; standing by the name 1-800-PROVE-IT campaign (try it and if you don’t like it, just call 1-800-PROVE-IT and we’ll buy you a stick of yours!), bit the dust against the biggest rivals “Axe”, who promoted themselves as the product to buy if you want to attract the ladies.