In maybe the most brilliant marketing move of the year, Old Spice has used their handsome, worldly spokesman to answer the tweets of Twitter users, both famous and ordinary. The insanely intelligent aspect of this is not the creation of additional, hilarious content to endear you to the Old Spice brand; rather, it's the combination of interactivity and getting more value out of their popular mascot than they initially intended. Old Spice must have worked hard to come up with the persona of the 21st Century version of the Old Spice Guy; why not extract as much value as they can while he's still popular?

The key aspect of all of this is that this is where advertising is heading. No, not necessarily toward buff, fast-talking dudes who stand eerily still; it's moving toward creating value. The value that the Old Spice Guy provides--in addition to his charm and good looks--is comedy. So far, every video that Old Spice has put out has been funnier than anything that the writers of Two and a Half Men have ever developed. In addition to being funny, viral and re-watchable, the videos are honest. They give no false pretenses about what they are, which is, of course, advertisements.

Even though many people lament the thought of living in a world saturated with ads, the upside is that the cream will rise to the top and those are the ads that will be emulated and improved. It won't just be about getting eyes on your ads in the future. With all of the capability of the Internet, people will begin to expect comedy, interactivity, value and more when jusdging whether a company will get their business. So, that may mean more ads to deal with but hopefully, they'll be half as good as this Old Spice campaign! [TechCrunch]

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