PROMOTION EXECUTIONS FOR

ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN ASSIGNMENT
DELA NAUFALIA
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Axe’s Company Background
Axe or Lynx is a brand of male grooming products, owned by the British–Dutch company Unilever and marketed towards the young male demographic. Unilever launched axe in France in 1983. Another of Unilever’s brands, Impulse, inspired it.
Unilever were keen to capitalize on Axe's French success and the rest of Europe from 1985 onwards, later introducing the other products in the range. Unilever were unable to use the name Axe in the United Kingdom and Ireland due to trademark problems so it was launched as Lynx.
The European launch of the deodorant was followed by success in Latin America and moderate impact in Asia and Africa. In the new millennium, the brand has launched with great success in the United States and Canada. The company has also consolidated its deodorant portfolio by migrating other overlapping male deodorants into the Lynx brand such as South Africa's Ego brand.
In January 2012, Unilever launched its first Lynx product for women in the United Kingdom as part of a global expansion of the previously men’s-only brand. The Line of products is named "Axe Anarchy".
AXE, a leader in men's care, is an iconic personal care brand around the world that helps men look, smell and feel their best. The Unilever-manufactured brand is available in a line of deodorant bodysprays, deodorant and anti-perspirant sticks, shower gels and hair care products. AXE is the No. 1 men's grooming brand in the U.S., excluding shaving hardware, and achieved this status only seven years after launch. Including deodorant bodysprays, AXE is the largest men's deodorant brand in the U.S.
Unilever’s research and development teams work with a panel of ‘expert noses’ to create Axe products, and come up with fragrances that help men smell and feel their best. But the scents aren’t just developed in the lab. Every aroma is tested on the target audience such as real women. Every year, a new Axe deodorant fragrance is launched, combining seductive scents with the latest technology from the irresistible chocolate-inspired Dark Temptation fragrance to the stimulating Axe Rise range. And Axe, also known as Lynx in the UK, Ireland and Australia, also includes shower gels and shampoos with the same seductive scents.

The Axe Effect and Its Target Audience

Axe Body Spray is known for its overly sexual ads that center on the objectification of women and the insistence that their products somehow build confidence in straight men. Now we are given their new campaign, which consists of five ads stereotyping women such as Brainy Girl, High Maintenance Girl, Flirty Girl, Party Girl, and Sporty Girl. All five advertisements use stereotypes about women that supposedly are the everyday men have to deal with. In this specific one, we are introduced to the flirty girl stereotype. This woman makes her boyfriend watch her flirt with people all night while he holds her things and is ignored. But it is okay because Axe knows a real man can handle anything that comes at him as long as he has his handy dandy Axe products.
Although males of varying ages use Axe, Axe’s target audience is men ages 18-24. However, by the looks of its commercial, it appears that Axe is targeting a more specific group. Specifically, Axe’s target audience is straight white men in those ages 18-24. We can see this because people of color are not shown in the ads, and the men only want women in this set of advertisements. This ad uses several persuading techniques to better engage their target audience. Among these are: * Humor, because the situation is clearly outlandish, making it funny to the target audience. * Fear because the ad talks about how a supposedly real man is secure enough in his masculinity to keep his cool, putting fear in the viewer’s mind that if they can’t keep their cool, they’re not manly enough. * Beautiful people, because the women in the ad are basically models, implying that if you use Axe you will land gorgeous women. * Association, because this ad plants the association in people’s mind between Axe and manliness or Axe and getting lucky with the ladies.
In the resolution of this Axe story, the real man and is rewarded for keeping his cool. By how Axe believes that any straight white man age 18-24 would want to be rewarded. This lucky man gets to go home with not one, but two girls. Of course, he should be grateful for this great opportunity, seeing as they are obviously only engaging in this sexual adventure for his pleasure. There’s no danger in this adventure either, seeing as there is no possible way that two women could be attracted to each other or have the intention of being in a real relationship. Apparently, Axe feels as though they are doing any user of their product a favor by basically giving them girls. As a result, all straight white men age 18 - 24 should all be forever grateful to Axe, without a doubt.
What is interesting is Axe’s use of humor. Although we know that Axe is targeting a certain audience, this stereotypical offensive humor excludes a larger audience that they could be potentially be reaching. One example of an excluded group is females with males in a room. The women shown in this ad are objectified in many ways. They are not seen as someone that men are trying to get to know, but instead they only exist as sexual objects. In other words ladies, we are only good for sex according to Axe. On top of that, Axe also informs us that women can only fit into one of five groups. According to this new campaign, girls can be sporty, brainy, flirty, high maintenance, or party crazy. According to Axe, it's easy to figure girls out once people box them into one of these stereotypes.
Through these advertisements, Axe is promoting idea that they can help a straight white male age 18 - 24 figure out his “lady problems” with stereotypes and body wash. Their poor taste in humor is only matched by their poor judgment in marketing. Men are their target audience for the product because in the commercial, they are getting reward for it, however, women in the household are sometimes also going to be shopping for these products if the need begins. So Axe should consider separate a good part of their consumers.
This humor tells us two things about Axe’s way of thinking. First, Axe assumes that men make fun of women for their own amusement, and believe that by doing the same they can connect better with their audience. Secondly, Axe sees women as mere objects rather than anything or anyone deserving of more attention than that which is sexual.
The Product Line of Axe Effect * Java- Variant name after the island in Indonesia * Ready- Long lasting effect makes men always ready for “action”, blue colored can. * Willing- Long lasting effect makes men always willing for “adventure”, green colored can. * Conviction- If men have conviction, no woman can say no to them. Stereotyping women like men safe. * Pulse- Suggests that it gives geeks added confidence so they can pull off any dance moves to impress girls and be irresistible. * Dark Temptation- A chocolate-smelling fragrance. The advertising implies that because women like chocolate, they will find men who smell of chocolate irresistible. * Music Star Edition- It has mint flavor. A new launch of Axe.

The Axe Effect Targeting and Positioning This campaign concentrates on single segmenting male 18-24 year olds. It also targets to young at heart. Competitive advantage of this brand is it is complete monopoly over this brand proposition. In 2007, as competition got harder, Axe revamped its product packaging and launched television and online campaigns. Through its ads, it persuades youngsters mind that using this deodorant will help to attract girls, but it is just that they present the ad using humor and made something that attracts people very easy. It is rarely found that any centric ad for Axe is aired on Television. They believe that consumers take the foreign commercials without any difficulty. The company extensively uses TV ads and conducting many campaigns. The biggest strength of this brand is the underlying message that the brand users are high on confidence and always go for that Axe. It also ensures that costumers are constantly engaged with new fragrances. In 2005, had a profile launch of its new fragrance, Click. The brand has started its Internet based marketing initiative in India with Axe Land, which involved a virtual trip to the Axe world using link “theaxeeffect.com”. Its marketing strategy is always known as “Adventurous Marketing”. It is so because this brand deals with girls and seduction. However, it is in the safer zone even in case like markets in India. Besides TV commercials, the brand also uses print ads with Polaroid photos to its maximum impact. Axe is a classic example of global branding effort. Through this effort of making campaigns, they have created such as huge global image. Axe also conducted a contest to win a trip to Las Vegas as well. For that, online banner ads pushed men to play the online game and enter the contest. Axe commercials are also a big hit in YouTube. Other than that, wholesale distributors reported that Axe body spray led the men’s grooming category in 2007. The Axe deodorant contain in stylish bottle. So because of the packaging, it can easily be recognized. The packaging of Axe itself also has created a brand image for it.

Promotion of Axe Effect Promotion is an important part of marketing mix. Through promotion, company communicates with the consumers about their product. To communicate to the consumers company spends heavily on advertisements and promotional activities.
Advertising
To weave the Axe brand into the culture, the company extensively uses television advertisements. For example, to promote the Dark Temptation flavor, they showed an ad, which a boy who has used Axe deodorant passing by the roadside and all the girls around are getting attracted by the chocolate fragrance of the deodorant.
Sales Promotion Tools Axe uses discount to increase the sale in India and the company has slashed down the price of 150ml bottle from Rs.150 to Rs.125. Axe offers 20% extra in most of the varieties of Axe to provide more to their costumers. They also promote through online gaming that available on the site. Also Axe used the following communication tools for its promotion: 1. Figure [ 1 ]
Figure [ 1 ]
Advertising: Advertising can be explained as a paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of goods. This is the tool primarily used by Axe as a mode of communication. Axe uses TV commercials, print ads, and billboards. Axe also has tried to attract people with humors as shown on Figure 1. For example, the new launch of Axe effect is Music Star, Chocolate Man.

2. The ad shows that if you Axe then there will be seven Snow Whites instead of Seven Dwarfs, and all of the snow whites will be attracted to you. If a person is very thorough with a thing then they can say that the ad depicting women as it shows women being completely overwhelmed by nothing more than just a deodorant. 3. Interactive marketing: Interactive marketing includes various activities and programs designed to engage costumers and directly or indirectly raise awareness. Axe has a dedicated website (www.theaxeeffect.com) for existing product line as well as introducing the new products. Advertisements of Axe are visible all over the web in relevant and web social networking sites like Facebook, Hi5, etc.
Axe also introduced various campaigns like “Call Me”, “AxeLand”, and “AxeFeather” for an increased costumer engagement. 4. Games and mobile application: There is an application in iPhone called Axe effect. It was launched in 2009. The mobile app is no doubt made for more promotion of Axe. 5. Events and experiences: Company sponsored activities and programs designed to create daily or special brand related interaction come under this category. Axe organizes upbeat events for its new product launches and it follows this strategy worldwide. Axe also has sponsored a wide range of other events like youth festivals and music shows. Axe successfully launched five variants of new Axe Score, Dimension, Pulse, Touch, and Vice featured by an intriguing attraction wrapped up in a creative settings at Bunderan HI, Jakarta. 6. Publicity: “Getting the girl has never been easier, thanks to the Axe effect”. Axe has always promoted this idea and is evident in all of its advertisements and publicity stunts. Axe has the right story telling element and the video reinforces the brand’s provocative and contrarian personality without constrains from TV and radio censors. Axe new products are always awaited among its supporters and the company has always used tactful strategies for successful launches. Axe has always projected its products as cool, fashionable and stylish, these being the attributes customers want from a product like deodorant. 7. Word of Mouth Marketing: A good product also requires a good promotion strategy. In this case, Axe ad campaigns have always been the talk of the town. The humor in the ads travels from person to person and thus creating a positive vibe throughout its exiting and prospective costumers. Through its ads, Axe has always tried to capitalize on the hidden fantasies people have and bringing them up as a subject of discussion.
Below are the campaigns that Axe has already done and it resulted pretty well in Axe’s sales:
Axe’s Call Me Campaign Background

The Men’s Deodorant market is cluttered with a number of players shoving with each other for space. New entrants are getting mixed out every now and then with most of them are playing around the same theme such as Apply my Deodorant, Swoon the girls around you, etc. So, in such a situation, what did the supposedly big daddy of Men’s deodorant market, AXE do? Well, they gave people an experience that would remain on their minds forever, whenever they think of buying a deodorant.
A recurring story in small town research was that a signal of potential romance is when a girl ‘carelessly’ throws crumpled paper near a man, a seeming piece of trash that actually contains gold, her carefully penned mobile number. Access to this private line of communication allowed the man to have suggestive and flirtatious conversations not possible to have in public. Hence getting a girl’s number is a huge affirmation of attraction. A girl offering her number on her own makes the ultimate fantasy even more intense. This insight lead to the idea of the campaign called “Numberitis”.
The Plan is Unilever actually made the man experience his fantasy like a flirtatious and sexy engagement with a girl and the mobile phone was offered center stage. The average men now got the opportunity to talk to a hot Axe angel over the phone. They also had the experience of waking up every morning to the sexy voice of a hot Axe angel. The campaign encouraged guys to call a number and talk to an Axe angel.

While the actual implementation have several phases. The first phase is The Seed Phase. In the Seed Phase, researches were carried out in various cities and the findings were shown in the form of confrontational headlines on how women give out their phone numbers to men and how they use mobile phones in interacting with them. This built curiosity and set the stage for the next phase. The next phase is Numberitis phase. A fictional disease called “Numberitis” was bought to life. Public Relations practitioners was used to sensationalize market research findings and made the topic of exchanging mobile numbers a hot topic. Another phase is Launch Phase. Launch phase includes launch of Television ads and outdoor advertising. The ads had women giving out numbers to men applying AXE deodorants in various ways, be it ketchup inside a loaf of bread or blowing it up on the glass window of a car. The phenomenon was really catching up. The next phase is Engage Phase. It refers to once people got those numbers and called them up, they were greeted by sexy, cool voices of Axe angels who behaved flirtatiously with them. It brings to the last phase, which is Re-engage Phase. This phase telling us to take the experience one step ahead, the Axe angel also offered free wake-up call service, where the guy would be woken up by the angel for a week. This ensured that the consumer had continuous connection with the brand. Besides this, axe ringtones were up for grabs and there were opportunities to win iPods and iPhones.

Media Executions
First TV Commercial- Library:

In this commercial, a girl is pretending to search for her lost mobile phone, in a sensuous way. She needs the man’s cell phone to find hers. Then she makes her call from his cell phone and her cell phone turned out to be in her pocket. Then she hands over the phone to the man who gazes at her number that is still on the screen. As he watches her in joy, she gestures ‘call me’ sensually to seduce the man.
Second TV Commercial- Diner:

In this commercial, a man comes to a deli counter. The girl that works in the counter gets a whiff off of the body spray. Then she sexually offers if the man wants sauce on it. She artfully writes her phone number with tomato sauce while sensuously watching the puzzled guy. After handing over the hot dog with the spicy number, she gestures the expression ‘call me’.
Third TV Commercial- Car Traffic:

In this TV commercial, a girl stops her car at the traffic lights. Suddenly she gets whiff of the enticing body spray and looks at the bike rider. Then she sensuously gestures kiss but instead she makes dew on the glass of the car. After that, the girl writes the number on the car glass using the dew that she made and as always, she gestures ‘call me’ to the Axe user.
Objective
Mobile phones and the role they play in the dating game was the core consumer insight on which the ads were based. They portray Indonesian women hopelessly attracted to men who spray on the deodorant, unaware of the draw of ‘the Axe effect’. In the TV spots, everyday situations, such as visiting convenience stores, stopping at traffic lights or studying at the library, suddenly become sexually charged affairs for Axe users.
Results:
Out of a universe size of 28 million, Axe receives more than 4 million calls. This was a drastic jump, higher than their previous engagement figures with the consumers. The call volume grew from 3,000 a day on the first day that the ad launched to a high of 150,000 a day two months into the campaign. Not only that, Axe receives 1 million wake up calls. Consumers not only liked the experience, but also opted to stay in touch with Axe by subscribing for the wake up service. Another brilliant result is 40% of callers chose to even call the number again. It also increases Axe’s sales growth. It translated into a very positive business results, the campaign showed a share gain of 3.2%.
Axe Click Campaign

The axe undertook the click campaign in 2006 to promote its new fragrance “Click”. It was a pan global campaign, which was mainly targeted at young males. Axe’s main objective was to start a social phenomenon called “clicking”. The device used in this campaign was a clicker, which was basically used for counting. It was distributed to the Axe users around the world to keep a count of the girls they get along with. This campaign was well supported by the Axe websites. It proved to be a virtual world where men could gather and share the information regarding “clicking”.
This campaign is actually a viral campaign, which proves that Axe click works perfectly. Only one click, even in the digital world, attracts all of women kind. It is so because on the website people surprisingly experience the Axe effect just through clicking on the can. A user gets an email from a friend, which contains a link. After clicking the link, a can shows up just to be clicked. After the unsuspecting user clicked the can, he will receive 15 emails from young hot women. After the user got all the emails, Axe will email him that points out, “You just got the AXE EFFECT”. If you click that email, a link will show up that will guard the user to share it to his friends. And the snowball effect continues.
This campaign was implemented in two phases. In the first phase, a small teaser site with the name of www.clickmore.com was launched. Its main aim was to generate excitement around this campaign and encourage men to use clickers. In second phase, full site was launched with additional features of an interactive game and downloads. In order to encourage competition among the users, each week top ‘clickers’ for each country has their name displayed on the weekly leader board. The top clicker of the week wins a prize and is also recognized in the famous world.
This campaign also used television as a medium to interact with the consumers. The TV commercials featured Hollywood actor, Ben Affleck, as he was well suited to the role of an ordinary man getting female attention. It also uses the sales promotion tools of contest, which dew a quicker buyer response while adding value to the consumer by encouraging more confidence in him.

Results: This campaign turned out to be a huge success with its website registering 2 million visitors. Moreover, this successful campaign was used as a central theme in newer markets like India, Thailand, The Philippines and Puerto Rico. The Click Campaign is an example of successful interactive marketing, which directly engaged its consumers with the brand although in a virtual world of Internet. This campaign is also a good example of 360 degree marketing as TV commercials and events also supported this campaign along with the usual tools of interactive marketing.

“Chocolate Month of The Year” Campaign Overview

Axe launched another in November 2008 to promote its new variant Axe Dark Temptation in India. Although several different marketing communication tools were integrated into this campaign, the message remained consistent across all channels, which is Dark Temptation, makes men smell so irresistible that women want to “take a bite” right out of them. Although the campaign’s message was quite in line with Axe’s previous campaigns, its sexuality was at an even higher level. Not only were females chasing Axe scented males as we had seen in previous campaigns, actual physical contact in the form of biting and licking was occurring as well.
Media Executions As previously mentioned, Axe used many different message delivery tools in this campaign. Although it is impossible to discuss all of them in this report, it will nevertheless attempt to touch on those that deem to have been most important. Not surprisingly, a television commercial was created at the very beginning of the campaign in order to both introduce the “chocolate man” which a young man transformed into chocolate as a result of using Dark Temptation and to demonstrate the product’s “sexual powers”.

Axe was undertaken with association with Yahoo. It was 24-hour online campaign in which a dark man as placed in the center of Yahoo.in homepage on the 14th November. If anyone visited the homepage, then this dark man was converted to chocolate man after the deodorant was sprayed on him. This man then goes inside the banner ad after which the real consumer engagement began. If the visitor clicked on this banner ad then the content on the homepage changed into the chocolate related stories and the logo of Yahoo changed into a brown colored logo with chocolate dripping from it. If continued further than the service of sending a box of chocolates to a girl was also available. This service was made available only if the person visited the site of Axe, which required him to fill a form. This campaign was mainly used to capture the attention of the young Internet users who visited the Yahoo webpage. This campaign has the capacity of reaching 3.5 million users of Yahoo. This campaign was a part of an overall communications strategy used for the Axe Dark Temptation variant. This campaign was also backed up with the TV commercials and was specially designed for the Indian consumers. This campaign again highlights the importance of Internet as a medium of communication especially if the target audience is young.

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