Old Spice Builds A Bard Bot To Spar With Reddit’s Witcher Fans
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Old Spice partnered with Netflix to create limited-edition scents inspired by The Witcher. To build awareness and excitement, the brand needed to enter one of Reddit’s most devoted fandoms in a way that felt additive, entertaining, and worthy of conversation.
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The fastest way into a fandom is to add something worth loving. Reddit’s Witcher communities know every detail of the books, games, and series, so the idea had to reward that fluency—not simply borrow from it.
Old Spice met Witcher fans inside the world they loved with u/SmellyBardBot, a custom chatbot built specifically for Reddit. The bot responded to redditor prompts in verse, delivering more than 100 original poems about monsters, musk, and beloved characters from The Witcher universe.
The chatbot was scaled through a promoted post and generated more than 4,500 comments. More importantly, redditors played along exactly as hoped—trading insults, writing their own verses, and folding Old Spice into the language of the fandom. It was community engagement with a little musk and a lot of earned affection.
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Creative Agency: Wieden + Kennedy
Bot Development: Haptik
Ash Dunn, Creative Production Lead
Stephen Vallera, Head of Creative