A two-day marathon of almost real-time, personalized ads based on social media requests was so successful that it was causing Internet outages, according to an article on the campaign in AdWeek.

The 'Old Spice Guy,' actor Isaiah Mustafa, made more than 200 little videos over the course of two days from a studio in Portland -- in a campaign that has not only revitalized the Old Spice brand but which is likely to change the relationship between social media and advertising ongoing. “It just gives you a glimpse of where the world is going,” said Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google -- which owns YouTube, where the ads had their own channel -- during the company's earnings call. "In less than three days, the 65 response videos drew more than 5.2 million views on YouTube," and the brand’s Twitter followers grew to 48,000, from 3,000, reported the New York Times.

The effort involved a team of writers, art directors, producers, editors and social media strategists, Adweek described. "The social media experts initially identified a crop of popular bloggers in key areas like entertainment (Perez Hilton), technology (4chan) and advertising (Adweek's own AdFreak), as well as regular YouTube and Facebook commenters. The social media team scours the Web for comments related to the Old Spice campaign. They feed ones that are funny or from interesting sources to the creatives, who then determine which make good fodder for humorous videos."

Videos included a marriage proposal -- by the Old Spice guy, not from him, despite the wishes of hundreds of swooning women. (The woman in question said yes.)
[youtube]_-fLV28SkZ8[/youtube]'Old Spice Guy's first two commercials drew 13 million and 6.2 million viewers, respectively, according to an article in the New York Times. Even a video on how the first video was made drew more than a million viewers, the Times added.