Old Spice – It’s the campaign your campaign can smell like.

In short: Old Spice has redefined what a social media campaign is capable of. From this point forward, all social media campaigns will be judged against the success of this campaign.

For an overview of just some of what W+K has done for Old Spice, check out this NOTCOT Blog Post.

The piece of this campaign that has received the most attention is a series of YouTube videos, where Isa Mustafa (the Old Spice actor) makes more than 180 personalized videos that address everyone from Kevin Rose and Perez Hilton to random YouTube users who had commented on the original Old Spice videos. One person even requested that Isa make a wedding proposal video for his girlfriend:

(She said yes.)

The results speak for themselves: 5.9 million views and 22,500+ comments IN TWO DAYS.

In addition, many advertising/marketing blogs have written lengthy case studies about the success of this campaign, and even many of the traditional news outlets have started to cover the cultural phenomenon that this campaign has created.

Following the release of the videos, Google’s CFO said that Old Spice Is The Future, and Alyssa Milano agreed to date Isa if Old Spice donated $100k to the oil spill cleanup efforts:

It’s important to note that this was not just a social media campaign, and was done as an extension of a major media spend which established the character and helped to build the campaign’s awareness, but it does show how you can take a traditional campaign to the next level through the use of clever and well executed social media efforts.

Side Note: One interesting media buy for the Old Spice campaign was BustedTees, where they sponsored Free Shipping for a week:

Calvin Klein Puts Up A QR Billboard – In New York and Los Angeles, Calvin Klein put up a billboard that featured nothing more than a giant QR code and the call to action “Get It Uncensored”.

Users who scanned the code would then be able to view an ‘uncensored’ 40-second commercial featuring Calvin Klein models, and were then given the option to share the ad through Facebook and Twitter.

CNNMoney Features Best Places to Live with Gowalla – As part of Money magazine’s annual 100 Best Places to Live list, CNNMoney has partnered with Gowalla to help people discover the best parts of each city.

Through the partnership, users can take branded trips through many of the cities, and each of the top 25 cities has a trending list of locations where you can see which spots are the most popular amongst Gowalla users.

Help Vince! – The New England Patriots have teamed up with geo-location service SCVNGR to create a city wide scavenger hunt where fans can try to track down Vince Wilfork’s “missing” Super Bowl championship ring.

Using the app, fans will seek out more than 200 places throughout New England, complete challenges at numerous locations, and earn points and prizes for top scorers. The grand prize includes lunch with a Patriots player, and goes to the first person to successfully find the ring.

Barbie Gets Social – Barbie is releasing a new “Video Girl” doll that includes a working video camera and comes with video editing software that girls can use to make their own videos. They developed the doll in collaboration with iJustine, a prominent video blogger, and are launching the doll with a promotion on Foursquare and Twitter:

Fiber For Communities – When Google offered to bring ultra-high speed fiber Internet to a chosen community, they were overwhelmed by more than 1,100 community responses, as well as 200,000+ responses from individuals.

In response, Google created Fiber For Communities, a site where they can “provide additional resources for anyone interested in ultra high-speed Internet access”.

Small Discoveries – As part of their 25th anniversary, Discovery Channel created a program called My Discovery, where viewers and users could share tweet-length discoveries at any scale, from personal life to the wider world, and then Discovery would show the best of them online and on-air.

As Twitter notes, this campaign is interesting because instead of focusing on thousands and thousands of tweets, they chose to highlight a carefully-chosen group of tweets that “surprise, delight, or tell a story”.

Patron Cocktail Lab – Patron Tequila has created the Patron Cocktail Lab application on Facebook, where users can create new drinks in response to a challenge that Patron posts each month.

Once a drink gets created, Patron will have pro mixologists give ideas and feedback through the Patron Facebook wall, and users can vote on their favorites. Then, at the end of each month, a winning drink will be selected and will become an official, Patron-recognized drink.

Starbucks Has 10 Million Fans – On the heels of Lady Gaga reaching 10 Million Facebook Fans, Starbucks has become the first brand to reach the milestone, making Facebook an important channel in their ongoing social media efforts.

Facebook Has 500 Million Users – The rumor that’s been buzzing around the social media world for the last few days is that Facebook is preparing to announce its 500 millionth user, which would mean that they are adding an average of 100 million new users every five months.

At this rate, it won’t be long before any campaign that wants to reach a majority of the online audience is either run through Facebook, or risks leaving a large number of people out of the loop.

Hulu Serves A Lot Of Ads – According to ComScore, Hulu now serves more than 560 million video ads per month, making them the largest online video ad server, and placing them ahead of even Google, which serves just over 200 million across all of its properties, including YouTube.

Quick Hits:

• Moo has posted a few of the recent business card redesigns from their Business Card Project, which was featured in a previous Social Media Digest.
• Sony Pictures is the latest to use Twitter’s new Sponsored Trending Topic ad, with a sponsorship of the hashtag #SocialNetwork for the upcoming film about the founding of Facebook, called The Social Network.

Gowalla Events – Location Based Social Networks have always struggled with how to handle events (birthday parties, weddings, concerts, etc.) because they usually don’t last for more than a day or two, and while the people involved in the event want to check-in, the event itself doesn’t provide much value to others who are in the area. However, Gowalla seems to have solved that problem with the addition of Event check-ins, which allow anyone to create a temporary check-in location that will automatically expire the day after the event. The goal is to let people add the event to their location history, including comments and photos that they share during the event, while not cluttering up the rest of the Gowalla system in the process.

Twitter Statistics – During Twitter’s Chirp conference, they gave a number of statistics that provide insight into the often secretive company. Among them, the fact that Twitter now has more than 100 million registered users, and gets more than 300,000 new sign-ups per day.

Facebook Statistics – If you’ve ever wondered how many users Facebook has, or how many friends those users have on average, then check out Facebook’s official statistics page, where they keep up to date numbers on a variety of things that can be useful for research and presentations.

The Nets and Gowalla – The Nets teamed up with Gowalla recently for a ticket giveaway promotion, and VaynerMedia created a fantastic case study deck that covers the whole process from beginning to end, and shows how location based apps can be used for social promotions.

Elements of Twitter Style – To help people better understand the content and formatting of their tweets, and to see how that style impacts how well they are received on the service, Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software put together a style guide for Twitter that features a ton of great tips and tricks for making the most of your 140 characters.

Jimmy Choo on Foursquare – Jimmy Choo is organizing a ‘Trainer Hunt’ throughout London for the release of their new trainers line. To get involved, users follow the company on Foursquare, and when the account checks in at popular/stylish locations, they just need to be the first person to find them, and they’ll win a free pair of shoes.

Location-Based Ads See 50% Engagement Rate – According to a recent study by the Mobile Marketing Association, one in four US adults use a mobile location-based service, and nearly 50% of the people who are exposed to a location-based ad take some sort of action.

Starbucks Card Facebook App – Starbucks is continuing to make their Facebook Page a sticky destination with the addition of a Starbucks Card app that allows you to manage your card balance, view your rewards, and even reload your friends’ cards without ever leaving the Facebook site.

Location Ads Coming to Facebook – According to AdAge, McDonald’s will be the first company to use Facebook’s upcoming location check-ins as part of an advertising campaign. The feature, which will allow people to check-in at a local McDonald’s by using a Facebook app, will also include a featured McDonald’s product when that message appears on a user’s wall. At this point, it’s all still rumor and speculation, but don’t be surprised to see an official announcement in the next week or two.

Dairy Queen Blizzard Birthday – Dairy Queen is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Blizzard by driving a Blizzard themed truck through 25 cities across the US and Canada, and documenting the whole thing on Facebook and Twitter along the way.

Facebook Impact – Inviting others to join Facebook has a huge impact on the usefulness of the social graph, and a new page from Facebook allows you to see which of your friends has invited the most. You can also see how many people you have invited, how many have accepted, and invite new people right from the page if you’re unhappy with your results.

Lady Gaga on YouTube – The music video for Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” has now been viewed more than any other video on the site, with nearly 200 million views in less than 6 months, edging out the previously most viewed video, Charlie Bit My Finger.

AOL Mystery Flyer – To promote their travel site, AOL is sending a mystery flyer on flights with 10 major US airlines to see how they stack up. Along the way, the mystery flyer will be sharing their experiences through Twitter, and grading each airline to give you an honest opinion of who’s doing the best job.

Reddit Self-Service Advertising by The Oatmeal – Reddit is a popular link sharing site, and The Oatmeal is a popular online cartoon, so when the two work together, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be good. To help users get comfortable with Reddit’s new Self-Serve Advertising model, The Oatmeal created a guide to the new service that’s equal parts entertaining and informative.

Axe Undie Run – With a brand like Axe, you can’t just sponsor any old charity, so they’ve decided to put their support behind the college tradition of the Undie Run. At 10 schools across the country, Axe will show up with a truck, and the school that donates the most clothing before their Undie Run will be declared the winner.

Crysis Contest – To build up social buzz around the release of the Crysis 2 video game, EA created a contest where entrants would tweet a message (Hey @Crysis, I want you to put my name in the game! http://crys.is #Crysis2contestXX) and 25 people would be selected at random to have their name, gamertag or PSN ID tagged in the New York landscape that the game takes place in.

Underground Puzzle Revealed (NSFW) – Remember the #UnderGround puzzle from the last Social Media digest? Well, it turns out it was an ad for Daffy’s, which offers high fashion clothing with more bang for less buck. They apparently also offer X-rated ads, as this one certainly wouldn’t get by the censors in its uncut form.

Swagger Wagon – Proving that the minivan doesn’t have to be a dull ride, Toyota’s Swagger Wagon campaign includes a fantastic YouTube music video that’s sure to have all of the hipster dads reconsidering their Caravan purchase.

Fantasy University – Fantasy University is a social adventure game that aims to put a new spin on the old-school Massive Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) format by heavily relying on a custom Facebook app. Students must first ‘apply’ to the game, and if they’re accepted, they will embark on a journey instilled with grown-up humor dialogue, fantasy art and exuberant pop culture references.

Pringles Helps the Oversharers – Though it’s easy to agree with the premise of the campaign (the stuff that some people share online is totally ridiculous) the connection to Pringles seems loose at best (they need help to start sharing things really worth sharing, like Pringles). Either way, Pringles has created a pretty clever campaign where users can share their friends’ overshares from Facebook or Twitter by reposting them onto the Pringles site, as well as by creating an ‘Oversharers’ video that uses Facebook Connect to put their friend’s overshared update into a pre-made video from London’s Piccadilly Circus.

Would You Check In To A Box Of Tampax? For Charity? – CauseWorld is expanding the ‘check-in’ beyond location to now include product check-ins, which consumers can do by scanning the barcode on everyday items from P&G and Kraft using the CauseWorld app. Though CauseWorld is currently using a charity to help motivate people to get over the unnatural idea of checking in to a product, this could become more natural as people get used to the concept of checking in to both places and products during the course of their day.

Jacques d’Azur Can’t Go To Cannes This Year – Stella Artois is sending one lucky person to the Cannes Film Festival this year, and created a rather unique campaign that uses Facebook data to customize the experience for each user. Just click ‘Connect’, and watch as a custom movie invites you to participate.

The Plastiki Expedition – The Plastiki is a sailboat made entirely out of recycled materials that’s sailing from San Francisco to Sydney to help promote plastic recycling. Along the way, they’ll be using Twitter (http://twitter.com/plastiki), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/plastiki), YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/theplastiki), MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/plastiki) and Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/plastiki/) to update their fans on their progress, so you can follow along as they bring attention to their cause.

Postbellum Data From Foursquare and Gowalla – South By Southwest was the site of the latest battle in the Location War between Foursquare and Gowalla, and the data that both companies have released indicates that usage was strong, with nearly half of the attendees using at least one service to check in at some point during the conference. TechCrunch has assembled a number of statistics about the usage of both Foursquare and Gowalla during the conference, and it’s a good indication of their potential, since SXSW served as an ideal test bed for location based social networks due to the high percentage of advanced social media users in attendance.

Lady Gaga First Artist With One Billion Online Video Views – With three videos each getting more than 100,000,000 views, Lady Gaga has become the first artist ever to get more than one billion combined views of her online videos.

Zynga Stocking Pre-Paid Game Cards At Stores – Zynga, the company behind FarmVille, Mafia Wars and YoVille, has bridged the digital and the physical world with pre-paid game cards that will be available at more than 12,800 7-Eleven, Best Buy, Target and Gamestore stores. The cards, which will be available in $10 and $25 denominations, can be used to purchase virtual goods in Zynga’s online games, and should open up a whole new line of revenue for the company as younger users who weren’t able to purchase items because they didn’t have a credit card for online purchases will now be able to use cash to buy digital goods.

Clever Twitter Accounts – Twitter is using the @CleverAccounts account and a related Posterous Blog to highlight unique case studies of people and companies that are using Twitter in clever and unique ways.

Rapportive – Rapportive is a new social CRM tool that integrates directly into Gmail for easy access to the social information of anyone that you email.

When Do They Sleep? – By analyzing the time that tweets are posted by users, SleepingTime.org can make a surprisingly accurate guess of the sleeping schedule of many active Twitter users. It’s not the most valuable bit of information, but it is a good example of the types of information that companies are able to gather from the ‘extra’ data that is being generated by social media users.

SWIX – The Social Web Index is a new online tool that provides a free scorecard for online social media marketing efforts, giving you an easy way to track analytics and reporting for social media campaigns. With existing support for Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace and more, it’s one of the first tools to tackle the often challenging task of keeping track of results across a number of different channels in one location, and could potentially provide a valuable dashboard for anyone looking to track their online effectiveness.