Celebrity Campaign for Old Spice Grew Value Share 300%

Old Spice, India's iconic men's brand, was facing serious competition. Every major competitor in the category relied on the same “boy gets girl” communication, a well-worn category convention. Rather than compete inside that same convention, the decision was made to break from it entirely: target men directly with no-nonsense, manly communication instead. That decision became the foundation for a new campaign, “The Smell Mantastic,” fronted by Milind Soman as the “Mantastic Man.”

The campaign generated unprecedented interest immediately. That buzz was deliberately fuelled further with paid media across key portals, YouTube chief among them. In four weeks, the campaign's videos garnered over 5.5 million views, with two of them featured directly in YouTube's own “Most Popular Video” list, real, platform-verified proof of organic reach, not just paid impressions.

A real, named perception problem: the campaign named the real perception problem directly: despite the new positioning, many Indians still saw Old Spice as an older, dated brand, not a youth-relevant one.

While many loved the campaign, the reaction wasn't universal, some had genuinely polarising views. Rather than ignore that, the brand built a direct response: could the Mantastic Man himself enter into a real conversation with his fans, and change minds through it? “Mr. Mantastic Says” was the answer, a dedicated team of art directors, copywriters, and digital strategists identified real, live conversations happening online, profiled the specific person, their interests and passions, and then created a genuinely customised response, in the Mantastic Man's own voice, for that individual.

The response campaign became a real sensation. It generated over 6.6 million impressions organically in just three days, with positive sentiment rising to 71%. The Mantastic Man was suddenly everywhere in Indian media, generating 1.2 billion total media impressions, and the campaign was recognised as a top 10 marketing campaign of 2013 across all 8 major Indian publications that track such lists.

Real, independent proof: real, independent regional press coverage (Kannada-language press) named Milind Soman directly, part of a real total of 870 press articles covering the campaign.

Yet even with all that reach, many Indians still perceived Old Spice as, in their own words, “their dad's brand.” The Mantastic Man set out to change that perception directly, and to translate it into real sales, with a third campaign: “Mantastic Me.”

The mechanic was genuinely personal. Users were given the chance to become part of a real, paid media campaign, becoming the Mantastic Man themselves. All a user had to do was visit the campaign website, choose an ad template, and upload their own photo. The campaign then used the Facebook Ads API to target that specific, personalised ad only to that user's own friends, appearing directly in their news feed, complete with a real endorsement framing from the user's own social circle. That combination, genuine personalisation plus a friend's implicit endorsement, is what helped shift Old Spice's perception toward being the mantastic brand for a younger audience, not their father's brand.

The real mechanic, live: a personalised Facebook post telling the user's own friends that “your friend just swan dived into the sea of manhood with Old Spice, now it's your turn.”

Billions of media impressions and millions of organic engagements are meaningful reach metrics on their own. A 300% increase in value share, with shipment running 24% ahead of target within three months of launch, is what proves the three-phase campaign converted attention into a measurable shift in the market.

Figures as stated directly in the campaign's own results summary.

The transferable lesson is treating a campaign as a three-part conversation rather than a single launch. "Smell Mantastic" broke from category convention. "Mr. Mantastic Says" responded directly to how people reacted to that break. "Mantastic Me" then converted that attention into personal, friend-endorsed participation, and ultimately into a measurable shift in sales and market share. Each phase existed because of what happened in the phase before it, not a media plan fixed in advance.