It's been more than six years since Old Spice advertising started getting very peculiar indeed, with help from Isaiah Mustafa and, particularly, Terry Crews. But Wieden + Kennedy Portland has now outdone itself in the oddities department, taking two strange Old Spice spots from last year and remixing them, with help from video artist Nick DenBoer, into—in the brand's own words—a "horrifying mutant nightmare abomination."
It's as over-the-top as a commercial can get, and some might say the brand officially jumps the shark here by fully crossing over into self-parody . (There's even a shark in the spot.) But W+K tells AdFreak it's proud of this deviant monstrosity.
W+K creative director Jason Kreher says the idea for the remix came about when the agency team was looking over some contracts and realized they still had usage rights for a couple of 2015 commercials.
"We'd all seen Nick's work from Conan, but right during this period of time he released The Chickening, which is amazing," Kreher says. "We worked with him for about three weeks, and every version got better and funnier and weirder. He is obviously a video genius, but he also composed the song. … The stuff he was able to create using assets from just two commercials seemed impossible."
Check out the original two ads below.