I felt the same on Wednesday having seen the Old Spice campaign on social media, as I felt after Gorbachev and Reagan came out of a room at the White House all those years ago. The world will never be quite the same.

For a Brit, Old Spice means cheesy 70’s TV ads, so it was even more impressive for P&G and their agency, Wieden and Kennedy to succeed in the way they did.

In a nutshell, a series of TV ads run over the last few weeks introduced the brand character ‘I’m the Man Your Man Could Smell Like’. But on Wednesday the campaign was taken to a whole new level. Having seeded questions across social media for the last two weeks – “what would you ask the Old Spice man” 87 videos were recorded in Portland Oregon on Wednesday and broadcast live on youtube in real time. Staggering. As well as answering questions from influential twitterers such as Ryan Seacrest and Alyssa Milano (with whom he engaged in a 4 tweet video conversation) Old Spice man also answered those posted by average internet users who had posted their questions on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs.

The legacy of this campaign won’t be known for a time yet, but women creating a posting their own videos in response to Old Spice man, plus a ‘smell off challenge issued to the Old Spice man.

Is the this a sea change in the use of social media by big brands?