How do you get the attention of the hordes of young men who watch live streams of video games on Twitch? If you're Old Spice, you try a goofy marketing stunt. The men's grooming brand — best known for its ludicrous advertisements and pungent fragrances — has hired a "nature man" to wander around the woods and do whatever the internet pleases. As the company explains, "This man we have placed in the bounteous grandeur of nature is contractually obligated to do everything you, and millions of other Internet users, tell him to do."

If that sounds familiar, that's because it is. This marketing exercise is essentially a "real-life" version of Twitch Plays Pokémon, a Twitch phenonmenon from last year that saw tens of thousands of people at once try to play Pokémon Red and other classic Pokémon games. Of course, that was a video game — now Old Spice's marketing gurus have decided it'd be a good idea to let jokers on the internet tell a poor person what to do. To keep the "fun" from getting out of control, the "wilderness" that the "nature man" explores from April 16th through the 18th for 10 hours each day has been carefully set up for marketing potential. That means that poisonous berries have likely been removed and instead of real animals, there will be actors in suits. The forest also has talking trees, apparently.

"This man ... is contractually obligated to do everything you, and millions of other Internet users, tell him to do."

Old Spice is likely considering this whole thing an experiment at this point — like many other companies, it is trying to find how to best embrace the relatively new arena of live-streaming as part of its marketing plans. Most traditional ads on Twitch and similar sites are pre-roll video ads — often repurposed from television campaigns — and typical banner ads. Old Spice likely hopes that this new approach, which is tailored for the live-streaming site, will better resonate with its target audience.