I can’t refresh my Twhirl/Tweetdeck/Twhatever without seeing people rave about Old Spice today.

My favorite commercials as of late have been the Old Spice “Man your man could smell like” ads, starring Isaiah Mustafa as The Old Spice Man. And he’s the BEST.

The ads are hilarious and great on their own, but today Old Spice started filming Isaiah responding to YouTube commenters, celebrities, Twitter followers and prominent bloggers with individual videos, all of them around 30 seconds apiece. Some of the best:

So many things work about the  video series- the Old Spice guy is consistently funny, the writing is snappy, he’s not hard to look at, etc. But lets talk about efficiency here- Old Spice is uploading a new video response from the Old Spice guy a few times an hour. Same guy, same background, every time. Really, it’s only limited by the time it takes to find a question,  craft a witty response, and record an acceptable take. With preparation, you could create dozens of these videos in a day. Less than a day. Old Spice Man made a response video to a tweet from Lisa Barone within a matter of hours. That’s efficiency. That’s brilliant marketing.

By creating these individual responses, they’ve come up with the viral ad version of microblogging. It’s taking a public conversation and making it a party line. These videos have made Old Spice the most-viewed YouTube channel today AND the #4 most-subscribed channel of all time. Before this campaign, Old Spice was just my grandfather’s brand. Now they’ve come roaring back to relevance in a big way, and our belly laughs are all the better for it.

Well played, Old Spice. Well played.

In this economy, coupons are coming back in a big way- popular websites like LivingSocial and Groupon offer one-day-only savings on things like spa packages, restaurants and tourist adventures, and iPhone app Yowza!! offers mobile coupons based on your location for stores like The Finish Line, Pier 1 Imports, and The Container Store. But it’s a hassle to get coupons in your email, then print them, then remember them when you go out, then remember them at the point of purchase. Groupon now offers an iPhone app, but you still have to buy the coupon to use it, thereby adding steps between downloading the coupon and making a purchase. Yowza!! coupons can only be used once or twice, unless it’s a department or store-wide discount, which would be available to everyone without a coupon, so what was the point?

Hobby Lobby, on the other hand, offers coupons directly from their mobile site. Since it only takes a four-digit code to get the discount, it’s unnecessary to print out the coupon before going to the store so purchasing decisions can be made on the fly. Plus, the coupon can be used several times, meaning people can go back to the store over and over again, increasing the likelihood of repeat purchases and improving customer retention. People can effortlessly bookmark the site into their mobile browser and keep checking back to see what new coupon is offered.

The website also offers their weekly sales flyer and geolocation, thereby streamlining the process from identifying the need to purchasing the product. There are very few steps between accessing the coupon, finding a way to use the coupon, and then making the purchase. It’s a well-designed system that ensures ease of use for the consumer and, thankfully, for the cashiers. There’s nothing to scan, no app to download. Hobby Lobby’s mobile coupons are easy to use, and offer significant savings with just a scroll of a thumb. Other retail outlets, especially coupon-friendly establishments such as grocery stores, would do well to mimic their system.

Well played, Hobby Lobby. Well played.

The news about BP’s catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been a hot topic since the Deep Horizon explosion on April 20th. The initial hope that BP would cap the gusher, which is spewing an estimated 12,000 to 150,000 gallons of crude into the ocean every day, has since faded. The ‘Top Kill’ effort failed. Every day brings new images of oily seagulls and tarballs on our beaches.

People started getting angry, and whether it was just BP executives being out of touch with social media or just holding their hands over their eyes until it’s over, the headlines about BP executives’ gaffes inundated Twitter: between BP CEO Tony Heyward saying he “wants his life back” rather than having to deal with the spill or BP Rep Randy Prescott saying “Louisiana isn’t the only place that has shrimp“, the satirical hashtag #bpcares has trended consistently, tacked on to people’s angry or sarcastic tweets about the oil spill or BP’s insufficient response.

The ringleader of these efforts seems to be “Leroy Stick”, the creator of the @BPGlobalPR parody twitter account. With 135,000 followers, @BPGlobalPR’s tweets are retweeted and favorited hundreds of times.

Selected works:

“The good news: Mermaids are real. The bad news: They are now extinct. #bpcares ”
“Safety is our primary concern. Well, profits, then safety. Oh, no- profits, image, then safety, but still- it’s right up there.”
“Please do NOT take or clean any oil you find on the beach. That is the property of British Petroleum and we WILL sue you.”

BP has tried to shut down this Twitter account, which sparked an outrage that Twitter described succinctly with a widely-retweeted quote from comedian Jimmy Fallon: “BP wants Twitter to shut down a fake BP account that is mocking the oil company. In response, Twitter wants BP to shut down the oil leak that’s ruining the ocean.”

As Stick put it in his press release,

I’ve read a bunch of articles and blogs about this whole situation by publicists and marketing folk wondering what BP should do to save their brand from @BPGlobalPR.  First of all, who cares?  Second of all, what kind of business are you in?  I’m trashing a company that is literally trashing the ocean, and these idiots are trying to figure out how to protect that company?….

Do you want to know what BP should do about me?  Do you want to know what their PR strategy should be?  They should fire everyone in their joke of a PR department, starting with all-star Anne Womack-Kolto and focus on actually fixing the problems at hand.  Honestly, Cheney’s publicist?  That’s too easy.

As a social media enthusiast, I have to agree with Stick. If you want to manage your PR online, trying to destroy other people’s dissent only creates more dissent. Twitter should be used for crowdsourcing public opinion of your brand, the rapid dissemination of company news, and engaging with your audience.  One look at the real BP Twitter Account reveals one reply, and several RTs of tweets from government response initiatives, but no conversation. No outreach. No attempts to answer the angry or comfort the afflicted. BP is missing an opportunity here to polish their public image here simply by being transparent. People cry out because they want to be heard. If BP’s Public Relations team really used their Twitter account to engage, even with only 11,000 followers- if they made those 11,000 followers feel like they were listening, then millions more would listen too.

If BP wants to turn the tide of Twitter rage, they need to engage. As it stands, their reputation (and our ocean) may be an oily mess for years to come.