Regardless of the ad’s success, marketing tracking agency WARC reports that sales of the specific product the Old Spice Man is holding are down by 7%. Some agree and explain, others refute.

One thing worth looking at, apart from the sales data, is how many people have been searching for “old spice” and how the campaign impacted the search volume. Below is the timeline of how often people have been searching for “old spice” in Google (from Google trends).

Notice how the campaign only hit the viral sweet-spot in July. According to BrandWeek, the 7% figure is for 52 weeks ending in June the 13th 2010. The viral effect only takes off in July, which isn’t included in the data.

The campaign’s impact on search volume from February to June might not be reflected in sales, but the jury is still out on the impact of the viral aspect, which only just took off.

This particular campaign, created by San Francisco’s Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, is about saving honey bees (apparently, bee colonies in the US are declining rapidly).

The company’s target for the first phase of the campaign, which ran in August and September, was 1 million impressions. It generated more than 13 million impressions.

The second phase of the campaign will rely heavily on social media. Haagen-Dazs teamed up with ExperienceProject.com and used their TwitCause site to promote the campaign, offering to pay $1 per tweet generated (up to a maximum of $1000 per day).

Whether the social media phase is as successful as generating impressions as the first phase remains to be seen but if a Twitter storm gathers around the honey bee cause, which seems likely judging by the campaign’s initial success, Haagen-Dazs will have created quite a buzz for the bees – and their brand.