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Speed Stick was challenged to increase brand and message awareness, and more importantly, to increase brand favorability. With a goal of keeping their brand messages of "How Competitive Are You?" and "Micro-Absorber technology-- tiny particles that can absorb up to 100x their weight in wetness," Speed Stick turned to Maxim Online for a unique way of communicating their messages to the elusive M18-34 audience. As the category has gotten much more competitive, Speed Stick realized that they had to become more relevant to their target audience and communicate to them in a trusted environment.
Maxim Online decided that it was important to entertain men in order to get this message across to them and therefore went to work on creating a series of videos and games to do just that. Based on Maxim's inherent irreverent tone, and in the spirit of staying consistent with that, we chose to poke fun at typical broadcast deodorant spots and instead chose non-traditional sports that would have our guys in stitches. To that end we depicted overly competitive men in ping pong, air hockey, and wiffle ball and showed how their commitment to their respective sport and their competitive spirit is played out in their everyday lives. The idea was generated through our internal marketing department and germinated with the assistance of the creative agency, VML, the Media Agency, the Digital Edge and the actual client.
Over the course of three months we released one video per month along with its corresponding Speed Stick branded game. The videos, games, and a three month long sweepstakes sending a winner and a friend to their favorite sporting event, were all hosted on a Speed Stick/Maxim co-branded microsite, which was promoted and supported with co-branded media running across Maxim Online. In the end, we developed a fun environment for our guys to hang out in where they could play mindless addictive Speed Stick branded games and also view the short films that were developed.
By all metrics -- page views, video views, game plays, sweepstakes entries, opt-ins, and Dynamic Logic results -- the campaign exceeded expectations. Although there was certainly Speed Stick branding throughout the experience, the key to success was it was created in a way that was acceptable and embraced by our guys.
The only thing we would change would be to have had everyone who ultimately become involved in the conceptual brainstorming there from the beginning.
The significance of this campaign is that Maxim Online was able to help change the way an established brand thinks about speaking to its target audience. This was a huge undertaking for a company like Colgate, and the results proved that you can make a deodorant product connect with its target consumer and have them heavily engaged in the product in a non-conventional way.
-- Steven Rosenblatt, national advertising director, Maxim Online