Why is Olay Sponsoring History Channel Webseries

There is a kind of cute, sorta cheeky little webseries over on The History Channel’s website called Great and Telling Tales with Timothy Dickinson.

Aside from the fact that there does not seem to be any way to embed the videos (always baffling) I am totally confused by the presence of Olay as the sponsor.

Not only does being a sponsor for History.com seem to be counter-intuitive to a brand that is all about maintaining ones youthfulness, but last I checked, the History Channel skewed more male than Spike TV.

Olay Proves Simple/Helpful is Online Gold

Most likely due to the fact that my facial skincare regiment consists of a bar of soap in the shower, it probably isn’t surprising that I’d missed the Olay for You website that seems to have struck a cord with their customers.

According to AdAge the site, “attracted more than a million visitors since January, 80% of whom completed an involved question-and-answer process and spent an average of eight minutes on the site.”

Those are some pretty remarkable figures.  I had to check it out for myself.  So, I headed over to the Olay site and discovered a simple, elegant design that combined simple text, pleasant voiceover and a well-guided Q&A about my skin and my skin needs.

Was it revolutionary?  Nope.  But is was quite sort of lovely and did what it said it would do.  A good lesson to others in the field is that you don’t need to be in someones face to make a strong impact.  Offer a real service in a positive atmosphere.