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.

Diesel Video Catalog – As part of their new Be Stupid campaign, Diesel created an interactive video catalog that uniquely combines branded story telling with a new way of browsing the Diesel catalog.

They Make Apps – Kettle, an interactive agency out of New York, created They Make Apps to help bring together top app makers with those looking to get an app made. Each app maker gets to build a profile that includes the types of apps they work on, examples of previous apps, and links to their social profiles, and those in need of an app maker can sort the list by a number of different categories to help find just the right match.

Cuervo Games – Jose Cuervo is putting on a series of American Gladiators style events to promote the tequila-making traditions of the Cuervo family. Events include a Waterfall Climb, an Agave Airwalk, a Mix-Off and more, with live shows scheduled in cities across the US. It all culminates with a national championship in Las Vegas, and everything will be broadcast live online through a partnership with Justin.tv

Twitter – Twitter recently re-designed their homepage to help bubble up more of the information that flows through the site, including more dynamic content like hot topics and a sample of popular tweets. The idea was to highlight the fact that Twitter “is not just for status updates anymore. It’s a network where information is exchanged and consumed at a rapid clip every second of the day.”

Always Split Test – The benefits of split testing have been known for some time, but can the same concepts apply to real world situations? One man aimed to find out, and helped a local homeless man increase his profits by more than 100% through the use of split testing. Read the story to find out how.

Brazilian Water Park Email – To promote Beach Park’s new Insano water slide, Pmweb sent out a unique email that simulates the feeling of riding the slide.

Facebook Community Pages – In addition to Groups and Pages, Facebook users can now create Community Pages for their favorite causes and topics. If they become popular enough (thousands of fans) the page will get adopted and maintained by the Facebook community, making them a form of social network wiki. This should also help to differentiate officially sponsored brand pages from community created pages, giving users “opportunities to express their enthusiasm and creativity, while allowing for Official Pages to continue representing official entities such as businesses, bands and public figures”.