"Old Spice Guy" has that ring you want.

YouTube

Isaiah Mustafa -- the actor portraying the now-ubiquitous "Old Spice Guy" -- and his perfect example of the male body have done wonders for Internet traffic while squashing the egos of mere mortal men across the world. Unfortunately, there's one thing that the Red Zone After Hours Body Wash ad campaign has thus far failed to achieve: selling Red Zone After Hours Body Wash.

There's no denying that the "Should Your Man Smell Like an Old Spice Man?" ad campaign has received enormous - and often rapturous -- media coverage. When the Old Spice Guy proposed marriage to a woman on behalf of a man who sent in his request via Twitter, Yahoo! was no exception. The problem: Sales are down a surprising seven percent. This situation is far from unique - mass attention does not always equal money in the bank.

In 1985, to counter Wendy's massively successful "Where's the Beef?" ad campaign, Burger King unleashed "Where's Herb?" Herb was supposedly the only person who had not eaten a Burger King burger. The commercials received quite a bit of attention: The actor who played Herb was even aguest judge at Wrestlemania II -- about the closest thing to "going viral," pre Internet -- but the campaign failed. Not only was the ad campaign scrapped, the advertising agency responsible was fired.

Along with the marriage proposal, Old Spice Guy recorded hundreds of messages via YouTube in response to submitted questions. These responses included messages to celebrities like Alyssa Milano, Rose McGowan, and Ashton Kutcher. The YouTube campaign has resulted in over 12.2 million hits.

Why have Old Spice sales dropped during this current campaign? It's probably too early to tell, though the website Jezebel has some interesting theories: Are the women targeted by the ads not actually the ones making body-wash-related decisions for the men in their life? Is the Old Spice brand too "old" to resuscitate, even by a shirtless hunk who personally answers his fans? In any case, it doesn't take too much analysis to realize that if people are at home submitting Twitter questions to the Old Spice Guy, that doesn't necessarily mean they're rushing out to buy Old Spice. Consumers certainly can't smell how wonderful Mustafa smells through their computer -- but they sure do like hearing him say their names.

Update: A representative for the Old Spice ad campaign clarifies the sales trend and goal of the "Old Spice Man" commercials as follows: "[The] campaign is for Old Spice Body Wash overall, not specific to just Red Zone After Hours which just happens to be the body wash bottle used in the TV spots....Since the Smell Like A Man, Man campaign broke in February, Old Spice has month over month strengthened its market position and is now the number one brand of body wash and anti-perspirant/deodorant in both sales and volume with growth in the high single/double digits."