Ahoy! Old Spice tries to break into a new audience

So how do you take a brand that most people probably associate with their grandfather or great uncle and rejuvenate it for a new, younger audience? You develop a slogan that plays up the concept of experience, you hire one of the greatest tongue-in-cheek comedy actors of our generation and you write some hilarious commercials designed to make that bit of gray hair a badge of honor.

This is exactly what Old Spice (a Proctor and Gamble brand) has done recently. This is very smart. With a name like "Old Spice", they were never going to be able to portray it as a cool, young product. The new slogan "Experience is Everything" suggests that those older gentlemen out there living the life (with their yachts, mansions and classic sense of style) are onto something that us young guys wish we had. It's a great example of taking a potential brand weakness and spinning it into a strength.

Here's the original Old Spice commercial. Pay special attention to the painting behind him as he walks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1OxkFOK18

Here's the new Old Spice body spray commercial. This is very confident and well executed. Note that there isn't a single word spoken about the product, yet the message comes across loud and clear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TgUkewQX1M

Comcast Channel 1 : Tuning in a new brand

How do you make a major new brand without having to create a new service or product? Ask Comcast.

After years of successful growth for Comcast's On Demand service, the Philadelphia-based cable giant decided to give its popular service a new identity, rebranding it as "Channel 1". All of a sudden, comcast channels are full of commercials for "ch1", and the site even has a new, Flash-based, video-filled website at http://www.comcastch1.com/

The thing that's so beautiful about this is that Comcast didn't have to develop anything new in the actual service offering. They already had a great product that had a pretty bland identity (and frankly, I could never remember if it was "OnDemand" or "InDemand"). By simply rebranding it, they have managed to breathe new life into the offering. Plus, they made it easier for people to remember how to get to the service (just punch in channel 1 on the remote control).

Are there other companies with "sleeper brands" out there that just need a new face to reinvigorate them? Probably. As I find them, I'll mention them here.

A Super-Powered Brand

What do Comcast, Burger King, Kraft, 7-Eleven and Target have in common? They're all caught in the same web of brand cross-promotion!

Spiderman 3 has taken over theaters across the country, setting box-office records and simulataneously unleashing a tremendous wave of product marketing tie-ins. The interesting thing about this, and other movie/product tie-ins, is that the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts. The movie brand gets incredible visibility in physical locations as well as on TV (case in point, I saw a commercial break tonight where three out of four commercials had something to do with Spiderman), while the partnering brands get to leverage the excitement over the movie to help them seem current and stand out in the crowd.

For a truly popular, mass market movie like Spiderman, it really is a win-win and the movie comes out looking like... well... a hero.