Old Spice burnishes geek credentials with 'Krod Mandoon' deal

There's a six-degrees-of-separation thing going on here, so try to keep up, OK?
  Bruce Campbell starred in the cult-classic Evil Dead movies and also in an Old Spice ad campaign not long ago that played to his geeks-in-the-know fan base. Comedy Central is launching a new series in the Evil Dead vein: a fantasy action series called Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire that's a little Hercules and Xena and a lot of righteous warriors, evil rulers and exaggerated British accents. Ergo, Old Spice is sponsoring the premiere of Krod Mandoon with limited commercial interruption. You follow?
  The marketer, apparently a fan of genre-bending parody for young males, will be the exclusive sponsor of the one-hour series launch, airing this Thursday. And with the deal, Comedy Central gets into the game that a lot of cable channels and networks have been playing for some time—namely, selling a highly touted episode to a single advertiser. Old Spice will use the time to air its centaur spot. You know, the disconcerting one from Wieden + Kennedy and Digital Domain that lets us peek at a half-man/half-horse while he's sudsing up in the shower. Now, if the centaur could just get a Krod Mandoon cameo appearance, everything would be connected.

—Posted by T.L. Stanley