The last couple of days have been an Old Spice explosion, as one of the most popular viral campaigns in recent history — in which the Old Spice Guy made personalized videos for fans, randoms and prominent bloggers alike — has taken over the social media realm. But how popular was it really? Visible Measures has some nifty numbers for us.

First, here's the basics:

Number of videos made: 180+

Number of video views: 5.9 million

Number of comments: 22,500

And that's since Tuesday.

The campaign, which stars The Most Interesting Man in the World 2.0 Isaiah Mustafa, launched in February centered around the theme "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like." The original ad attracted 19 million views to date across all platforms (not just the below YouTube clip).







Next came "The Return of The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," which premiered a few weeks ago and has already garnered 6.9 million views.







As you can see, the campaign has only continued to grow in popularity — likely due to increased press/brand recognition.







According to Visible Measures, "Old Spice Responses" — a.k.a the string of custom-made vids — is one of the fastest-growing online video campaigns of all time. The company compares the endeavor to some of the most popular viral videos to date below, and how they've grown over the course of 24 hours (to be fair, "Old Spice Responses" had a time limit attached, so there was more urgency to participate with this particular string of videos than there was to get in on, say, the Susan Boyle craze).







Using Viewers to Go Viral

What's genius about this endeavor is how Old Spice and marketing agency Wieden + Kennedy have used viewers to go viral. Yesterday, I was chatting with Dan Greenberg of Sharethrough — a company that seeds viral videos for brands — about the campaign, and he pointed out that, "Brands don't make viral videos, users make videos viral." That's exactly what Old Spice achieved, rather handily.

Read Write Web has an excellent piece on how exactly this campaign worked, explaining how a team of "tech geeks, marketers and writers" gathered together and tapped everything from Facebook and Twitter to Reddit and 4chan (yes, 4chan — they went there) to make this thing go global. As I pointed out on Tuesday and Stan Schroeder opined this a.m., this campaign worked so well because it spoke directly to you.

A New Kind of Viral Video?

"In a way there's nothing magical that we've done here," Wieden + Kennedy's Global Interactive Creative Director Iain Tait, told RWW. "We just brought a character to life using the social channels we all [social media geeks] use every day. But we've also taken a loved character and created new episodic content in real time."

And that might be the most interesting part of the whole deal — how overwhelmingly positive it is. Let's face it, most viral videos are shocking, disturbing and/mocking of their subject (as much as I adore "Double Rainbow," it is, well, kind of mean). There's none of that here. Instead of trying to trick folks into sharing content by creating something shocking or over-the-top (which would impel one to pass it along via the "WTF!?" sentiment) or coasting along on an established viral meme and attaching a product to it (as folks have done with Chatroulette and flash mobs), Old Spice first created a character that people — shock, shock, horror, horror — liked, and then created an immersive experience that people wanted to be a part of.

Congrats, Old Spice. You've set the precedent. Now ready yourself for the deluge of less successful copycats.