Old Spice's absurdist 'man your man could smell like' campaign doubled sales.

Old Spice had once been the default men's scent, but by 2010 it was seen as dated and its body-wash sales had slid. Instead of a new product, P&G commissioned a re-framing of the brand's voice.

Wieden+Kennedy made 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,' a long-take monologue in which former NFL receiver Isaiah Mustafa addressed the viewer, followed by a rolling series of short videos answering questions submitted live on Twitter and Facebook.

The campaign was engineered for social sharing, so viewers could influence what came next. It pulled in celebrity questions and more than 15 million views, and it was the brand's biggest market-share gain of any body wash.

The win was debated later because competitors also ran coupon programs in the same window, but the defining fact remained: a body wash that had been declining for a year reversed that in four weeks.

In the four weeks ending June 13, 2010, Old Spice body-wash sales were 106% higher than a year earlier, and the brand made the biggest market-share gain of any body wash.

It treated the ad as a conversation, not a broadcast, inviting audience participation.

The absurd tone made the brand feel current instead of grandfatherly.

Mustafa's performance was memetic and shareable on social platforms.

The real-time response loop let P&G ride attention while it was hot.

A revival can come from voice, not product; letting the audience steer the content in real time turns a commercial into a two-way conversation that out-earns paid reach.

The campaign became a canonical example of social-video advertising and Old Spice's repositioning spread across its men's grooming line, though the body-wash gain was partly catalyzed by coupons that same month.