I noticed this morning that OldSpice is being “promoted” on Twitter. The @OldSpice account has some real potential to be great, but it’s always a balancing act to try and keep a character like that interesting for very long. Not a huge shelf-life for super over the top commercial characters. I’ll be curious to see how they play this, and how long it will last.
One of the first thoughts I had upon seeing this account, was that this (Old Spice guy) is the new “Most Interesting Man” (from Dos Equis). The second thought I had, was to find the twitter account for the Dos Equis character.
What I found was…that it was really hard to find. It seems like the Dos Equis character had become so popular, that dozens of people have created phony twitter accounts for The Most Interesting Man, blurring the line between the brand controlled version of the character and the audience controlled version(s) of the character.
I don’t really have a fully formed thesis here, but maybe some of my other social media and marketing thinker friends do. Is this type of imitation the ultimate measure of a viral campaign’s success? Is this loss of control dangerous? Any thoughts?
And for what it’s worth, I never did find the “official” Twitter account for the Most Interesting Man. There is a Facebook page, but no Twitter account as best I can tell.
UPDATE:
Ok, so this is absolutely fantastic. Turns out OldSpice is doing customized Youtube video mini-commercials responding to Twitterers. Really well done.