The hook. Isaiah Mustafa, in a towel, talks straight down the lens: look at your man, now back to me. In one unbroken shot he glides from a bathroom to a boat to a horse, conjuring diamonds and tickets along the way, and closes with the most quoted button in ad history: I'm on a horse. Wieden+Kennedy made it for Old Spice in February 2010.
Why it works. The targeting is the genius. Old Spice knew women bought most of the body wash in the household, so the ad ignores the man who uses it and speaks directly to the woman who buys it. Second person, eyes on you, the whole time. The single take matters too: once you notice there is no cut, the craft becomes the story, and people share it to show their friends the trick. Then Old Spice made it participatory, shooting almost two hundred personalized video replies to fans and celebrities, turning a TV spot into a conversation. A 75-year-old brand became the funniest thing on a two-year-old platform called YouTube.
Steal this. Sell to the person who actually pays, not the one who uses. Write in second person and hold eye contact. And put one impossible-seeming piece of craft in the ad, because "how did they do that" is a share button.
Ad by Old Spice and Wieden+Kennedy. Watch the canonical upload on Old Spice's YouTube channel.