Q&A with the W+K Old Spice team

Last week, Old Spice owned the internet and while some may find it difficult to support the creative campaign due to an overabundance in choice, others (like me) love it so much they want to marry it. On the Beancast this week Duane Forrester, Dan Goldgeier, Joseph Jaffe, and Helen Klein Ross, spoke about the campaign and strategy
- check out Episode 111: Smell Like Duane if you haven't already.

We managed a quick Q&A with the W+K Old Spice Team on Friday - they're slammed now, as you would expect which is why it took them a little while to get back to me. The extra delay is due to the fact that I actually take weekends off in July (what? Don't give me that look. I don't get paid for this.) So, without further ado - the Adland.TV Old Spice Q&A

Old Spice - Re: Rose - how many teeth does a shark have?

db: How much time did you spend on each ad? 30 minutes? Seven? I'm not sure how many hours you were doing this, and is the total count 184 ads?
- More than 180 video responses were created in a three-day period. We worked as quickly as we could without compromising the quality and integrity of the spots. In most instances, start to finish ranged between a 10 to 20-minute window, but some were completed in as few as five minutes.

db: What social media sites were you watching in particular: twitter, Facebook and...?
- We had our eyes on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and everywhere in between. By pulling from various online channels, the campaign was able to reach a broader audience. W+K’s Interactive Producer, Ann-Marie Harbour, was the mastermind behind the production, while Trent Johnson, also from W+K’s Interactive Department, created a custom program that automatically pulled in questions and comments from around the web, which allowed the social media experts to efficiently review and select comments for the creative team to begin writing scripts on the fly.

db: Some have criticized Iain Tait for not giving the team more credit in the Fast Company interview. Who on the team should get more loud props in this article? We can all see that Isaiah Mustafa is doing a fantastic job, but who was behind the camera?
- The idea for this interactive campaign came from the mind of Iain Tait, but without a doubt, this was a truly a collaborative effort. We’d love to share the team behind this:

W+K Portland
Creative Directors – Eric Baldwin / Jason Bagley
Copywriters – Eric Kallman / Craig Allen / Jason Bagley / Eric Baldwin
Art Directors – Craig Allen / Eric Kallman / Eric Baldwin / Jason Bagley
Interactive Producer – Ann-Marie Harbour
Executive Creative Directors – Mark Fitzloff / Susan Hoffman
Global Interactive Executive Creative Director – Iain Tait
Developer – Trent Johnson / John Cohoon
Digital Strategy/Community Manager – Dean McBeth
Digital Strategy – Josh Millrod
Interactive Studio Artist – Matthew Carrol
Intern – Cody Corona
QA – Jason Schwartz
Account Team – Diana Gonzalez
Business Affairs – Cindy Lewellen

Production Company
Production Company – Don't Act Big

Talent
The Old Spice Guy – Isaiah Mustafa

db: The copy on these ads were like manna from heaven. What's your favorite line of them all? What is one you proposed to the clients but got killed? How on earth did you get "silver fish hand catch" through?
- As you can imagine, we really had a lot of fun with this. Some of our favorite lines included “silver fish hand catch” and “monocle smile.”

db: How much of the funny responses were drafted before shooting?
-The day before the videos officially launched, we made a few responses in order to be ready to go live, but beyond that, the majority of monitoring, writing, shooting, editing and posting was truly in real-time.

db: The Old Spice campaign helped @Jsbeals propose to his girlfriend. I guess you must have expected someone to ask that, but did you know that I have been proposing to the old spice campaign, since "man your man could smell like"? What was the craziest/funniest request that you didn't respond to, and why?
- We really couldn’t anticipate the level of enthusiasm and engagement we’ve seen here and we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention none of this could have been possible without a remarkable client, Procter & Gamble and Old Spice. We were honored to deliver the marriage proposal (and thankful she said YES). We saw a lot of fun comments and requests and simply couldn’t respond to everything.

db: Related I guess, fans want to know how many proposals Isaiah has been offered.
- We really couldn’t say, but who wouldn’t want to marry those abs?

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There ya go folks, the Old Spice campaign is still ignoring my actual proposals example, another one, and here in the comments again. I'm serious!
Don't stand in the way for my lurve! *sobs, slams door to bedroom*