OLD SPICE | DIKEMBE MUTOMBO'S 4 1/2 WEEKS TO SAVE THE WORLD | 2013
4 and a Half Weeks Until the End of the World, and Mutombo's Wagging His Finger / OLD SPICE "DIKEMBE MUTOMBO'S 4 1/2 WEEKS TO SAVE THE WORLD"
According to the Mayan calendar, the world was supposed to end on 12/21/2012 (December 21, 2012). Old Spice picked its savior: Dikembe Mutombo, one of the greatest defenders in NBA history. And the whole idea of saving the world through an 8-bit game is already pretty absurd.
The insight
This campaign loaded up on everything guys love: basketball, heroes, dumb humor, games. The challenge was delivering all of that in a playable form while staying true to Old Spice's whole world.
The idea
Old Spice teamed up with Adam Saltsman, the creator of Canabalt, to build a web game. Big news stories from late 2012—Gangnam Style, the vampire movie craze, alien invasions—got turned into game stages one after another, with a new chapter released each week over four and a half weeks. It even had a mode that poked fun at the ad itself, where Mutombo realizes, "Wait, this deodorant was actually a jetpack the whole time."
What happened
The campaign won GOLD.
Afterthought
I'm in awe of the sheer production stamina it took to keep churning out new content every week while tracking real-world news. The attention to detail is amazing too—Mutombo's deep voice and that finger-wag gesture of his became the actual cursor in the game. Sadly, the game itself is gone now; the official site just redirects elsewhere. I really wish they'd kept it archived somewhere.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2013
