I was talking to some friends yesterday about the internet’s latest craze, Old Spice Man. We all agreed the campaign is nothing short of genius, creating brand awareness the likes of which are rarely seen nowadays, with the information overload and all, and with a level of commitment and engagement towards the online world that is without precedent (they even created a video response to Anonymous). But we all agreed on one thing, while brand awareness and social media engagement are important factors, in today’s economic recession filled world what it really matters is the bottom line, product sales and ROI.

RIN in social media (or in general) has always been kind of a controversial matter, is engagement really worth the cost? Is brand value that important to increase sales? Some say yes, and some say no, but it seems there is still no definitive answer on that matter. I believe that now is a great time to find the truth, or at least to clear some doubts. If old spice sales don’t skyrocket, I believe companies will be much more suspicious of social media campaigns, and will perceive their ROI to be just not worth the effort. If, on the other hand, Old Spice starts to be an increasingly major player in the market via market share, then everybody who is anybody will jump on the social media bandwagon with even more money to invest, which will, probably lead to new and exciting ideas on public engagement and brand value.

I, for one, cannot wait to see what happens.

Cheers,
Francisco Duarte

Photo credit: Taylor Burnes

This entry was posted on Monday, July 19th, 2010 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.