• Nieman Journalism Lab, Friday, July 16, 2010 2:17 PM

What can we all learn from the viral success of the Old Spice Guy ad campaign? To "research, churn, lather, rinse, [and] repeat," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab. Still, "What might the Internet-owning power of the towel-clad spokesman hint about, yes, the future of news?" it asks.

"There's the obvious, of course: the fact that the ads are personalized. That their content is created for, and curated from, the conversational tumult of the web -- 'audience engagement,' personified." Furthermore, "The real hook of the videos isn't the OSM's awesomely burly baritone, or the whimsy of his monologues (the scepter! the bubbles! the fish!), or the post-feminist irony of his Rugged Manliness, or any of that. It's the fact that we're seeing all those things play out dynamically, serially, in (semi-)real-time. And: in video." As Web metrics firm Visible Measures reports, "We took a look at some of the most explosive viral videos we've measured, including Bush dodging Iraqi shoes, Obama giving his electoral victory speech, and Susan Boyle, and found that in the first 24 hours, Old Spice Responses outpaces all of them."

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