Old Spice Sails Into Europe With an Unbelievably Long Campaign
Old Spice's 'Unbelievably Long-Lasting, It Can Only Be Old Spice' is a 90-second cinematic film campaign created by independent Spanish agency Burns, launched in March 2025 across Spain and Multinational Europe, positioning the brand's upgraded long-lasting deodorant and shower-gel range through a Hollywood-style pirate-ship adventure that spans more than 40 countries across Europe and Central Asia.
The campaign represents one of the most geographically ambitious household product launches Burns has undertaken. Confirmed by burnstheagency.com, the rollout extends from Western Europe into Central Asia, with trade coverage noting Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia among the markets reached. The single hero film — approximately 90 seconds in duration — anchors a broader media plan encompassing television, out-of-home, digital, and in-store activity, giving the creative work unusual reach for a brand operating in the everyday household products category.
Old Spice entered this campaign with a clear strategic ambition: to move the conversation about personal care products away from functional claims and toward entertainment. The film's premise centres on a fresh-smelling pirate whose extraordinary endurance is the direct result of the upgraded product formula. The narrative deliberately echoes the brand's globally celebrated 2010 platform, threading in a seahorse gag that callbacks to the iconic 'I'm on a horse' moment from Wieden+Kennedy's 'The Man Your Man Could Smell Like' campaign, as documented by The Drum. In doing so, Burns signals continuity with Old Spice's comedic mythology while asserting its own European creative voice. The campaign was submitted to Clapboard by Zoe Brooks and earns a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100, reflecting strong creative ambition and geographic scale relative to category norms.
Old Spice occupies a distinct creative position within the European personal care and household products sector. The brand, owned by Procter and Gamble, competes directly against Unilever's portfolio — which includes Rexona, Axe, and Dove — brands that collectively hold substantial shelf presence across Spain and Multinational Europe. According to Ken Research, the global deodorant and antiperspirant market was estimated at approximately US$28.41 billion in 2025, with a projected compound annual growth rate of 6.0 percent to 2032. Research and Markets places the broader antiperspirants-and-deodorants category at approximately US$35.41 billion using a wider product definition, with a compound annual growth rate of 9.09 percent to 2031. These figures establish the commercial stakes for a campaign operating across more than 40 European and Central Asian markets.
The strategic insight driving Burns's approach is straightforward: category advertising for household products has long defaulted to functional demonstration, a format that treats efficacy as the end of the conversation rather than the beginning. Enric Jiménez Prat, Senior Director of Personal Care at Procter and Gamble, stated directly, as reported by thedrum.com, that 'advertising for this category doesn't have to be basic or boring, and our role at Old Spice historically has been to elevate it, moving it from just advertising to entertainment.' That mandate shaped every structural decision Burns made, from the choice of a pirate-ship narrative to the deliberate invocation of 2010 campaign mythology. In Spain and across Multinational Europe, where Unilever's Axe brand has long occupied the culturally provocative space in men's grooming, Old Spice's move toward cinematic spectacle represents a direct play for creative leadership rather than incremental share.
Burns constructed the 'Unbelievably Long-Lasting' film as a genuine genre piece rather than an extended advertisement. The approximately 90-second creative, confirmed by burnstheagency.com, deploys production values associated with theatrical adventure filmmaking — practical and visual scale, costume, and a narrative arc with a clear comic payoff — to communicate a product truth about extended freshness without ever reducing the work to a features-and-benefits recitation.
The central conceit is a pirate whose remarkable endurance at sea becomes the visual proof of the product's long-lasting formula. The seahorse gag embedded in the film operates on two levels simultaneously: as a self-contained comedic beat for audiences encountering Old Spice for the first time in 2025, and as an intertextual reward for audiences who recognise its connection to the 'I'm on a horse' moment that defined Isaiah Mustafa's performance in Wieden+Kennedy's 2010 campaign, as documented by thedrum.com and shots.net. The decision to encode that callback into a European campaign produced by a Spanish independent agency demonstrates creative confidence and a sophisticated understanding of brand equity that spans fifteen years of cultural memory.
Carla Alexander, Co-CEO of Burns, stated, as reported by thedrum.com, that 'creating an international campaign for a brand like Old Spice has been both a challenge and an opportunity to showcase and prove the immense talent we have at the agency.' The campaign credits, as documented by burnstheagency.com, include Alejandro Guerra and Jakub Grabmuller among the creative team, with Enric Jiménez Prat serving as Senior Director of Personal Care at Procter and Gamble on the client side. Zoe Brooks submitted the work to Clapboard, connecting the campaign's European production pipeline to the global advertising archive record. Production credits for the full directing and production house roster are not comprehensively detailed in publicly available documentation beyond agency and trade sources.
No independently verified campaign performance data for 'Unbelievably Long-Lasting, It Can Only Be Old Spice' is publicly available at the time of publication, a common condition for multi-market European household product launches where sales attribution across more than 40 countries involves retailer-level data that brands and agencies do not release publicly.
Structural analysis, however, supports a considered assessment of effectiveness. The campaign's decision to anchor a single hero film across Spain, Multinational Europe, and Central Asia — rather than producing market-specific executions — concentrates creative investment in a way that typically improves memorability metrics while reducing production cost-per-market. The television, out-of-home, digital, and in-store channel mix, as confirmed by burnstheagency.com, covers the full purchase funnel from broad awareness through point-of-sale reinforcement. The intertextual callback to the 2010 Wieden+Kennedy platform, as noted by thedrum.com, leverages existing brand equity rather than building recognition from zero, a structurally efficient approach in competitive household product categories where Unilever's Rexona and Axe hold strong recognition across the same European markets. The campaign's geographic ambition — more than 40 countries confirmed by reel360.com and thedrum.com — positions it as a signal of Procter and Gamble's confidence in the upgraded formula and in Burns as an agency capable of carrying an international brief. The Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100 reflects that ambition, crediting the campaign's cinematic scale, brand heritage fluency, and category-elevating intent while acknowledging the absence of verified outcome data at this stage.
The campaign is a 90-second cinematic film built around a pirate-ship narrative. Created by Burns for Procter and Gamble, it launched in March 2025 across Spain and Multinational Europe. The film positions Old Spice's upgraded long-lasting deodorant and shower-gel range as entertainment, reaching more than 40 countries across Europe and Central Asia.
Burns, an independent Spanish agency, created the campaign. Co-CEO Carla Alexander described the brief as both a challenge and an opportunity, as reported by thedrum.com. Creative team members Alejandro Guerra and Jakub Grabmuller are among the documented contributors to the film's production.
The campaign rolled out across more than 40 countries. The geographic scope spans Europe and Central Asia, with Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia among the confirmed markets, according to thedrum.com and reel360.com. Spain served as the creative origination market through Burns.
The 2025 film includes a seahorse gag referencing the original 2010 campaign's 'I'm on a horse' moment, as documented by thedrum.com. Isaiah Mustafa starred in the Wieden+Kennedy 2010 original. Burns encoded this callback deliberately to activate brand mythology across fifteen years of audience memory.
The campaign receives a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100. The score reflects the film's cinematic scale, its confident use of brand heritage, and its category-elevating approach across Spain and Multinational Europe, while noting the absence of independently verified performance data at the time of publication.
The campaign ran across television, out-of-home, digital, and in-store channels, as confirmed by burnstheagency.com. This full-funnel approach supported the single hero film across more than 40 markets, balancing broad awareness in Spain and Multinational Europe with retail-level activation tied to the upgraded product formula launch.
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