Old Spice

By the mid-2000s Old Spice was the scent your grandfather wore, sales were sliding, and the brand was basically a punchline. The obvious fix was to quietly modernize the packaging and run some ads of young men doing young-man things. Instead, Procter & Gamble and Wieden+Kennedy chased a research finding most teams would have glanced at and ignored, then built a Super Bowl spot and a wave of personalized video replies around it.

For founders and operators, this case is about a question that lives upstream of any creative: who is actually making the purchase decision, and are you even talking to them. It sharpens how you identify the real decision-maker in your chain, who may not be the person using the product at all. The campaign's mechanics are famous, but the insight underneath them is the part that transfers, and it is the part the case withholds until you work for it.