Axe Anarchy for Men & Women (2012): The Body Spray is Coming of Age {New Fragrances}
Axe is now de facto tapping into the more aspirational and prestige market by turning their attention to women's tastes with a new duo of scents called Axe Anarchy for men and women. Feminine fragrances are usually priced at a higher point, are more concentrated and generally motivate more research.
Until now, Axe had been targeting the stereotypical young male who wears fragrance only because he views it as a means to attract women, not for the love of perfume...
This gave birth to an Axe sub-culture of men-centric advertising with a sense of humor, which featured women falling by the dozens for the trail of an Axe body spray. In a context less controlled by the brand, an Axe body spray came to denote teenagers' initial maladroit steps in the art of seduction, shower substitutes, sneaker fresheners, and God knows what else.
So all this orderly universe is being shaken up with "Anarchy", an Axe-scented world in which women come to claim their body sprays too. And because teenage-minded men aged 18-24, the core audience of Axe sprays, really don't like females to enter their universe just like that, they will be able to express their emotions with words like "chaos", "anarchy," "boom, boom," "bang, bang," and "fwosh, fwosh."
It reminds you of how the name "J.K. Rowling" was created to carefully avoid any feminine reference for the teenage boys readership who can't get past female authors.
But don't get overly excited because the women's version is a limited-edition. It's also, unsurprisingly, a fruity-floral, which is the second most broad-appeal category of perfume, after musk. The men's version is a rich oriental. Axe, which is owned by Unilever, is apparently testing the waters of sex change, or rather mixity. So, it will be temporary to start with. If lots of babies are born after that campaign, then women will continue to claim their Axes, no doubt. Who knows it might come one day in a glass bottle with an atomizer after a few generations of advertising brainstorms and the full realization that Eve needs to be in Axe paradise too.
What will they do with these new powerful fragranced tools? The answer is revealed incrementally through teaser videos like the one below,
The campaign is participatory as you can decide on the course of the action which will be illustrated in a graphic novel in which some of the protagonists are depicted under the features of the followers who contributed the most meaningful ideas.
You can also read:
Axe Commercial: If you Use a Woman's Soap, you'll Smell Like One
A Rant about Men's Perfume Ads
