EFFIE AWARDS

BRIEF OF EFFECTIVENESS

Axe: How Dirty Boys Get Clean

Brand Name: Axe

Product Type or Description: Shower Gel
Category for this Entry: Beauty Aids
Campaign Title: How Dirty Boys Get Clean
Agency: Bartle Bogle Hegarty LLC
Media Agency: Mindshare
Client: Unilever Home & Personal Care

Marketing Challenge

BACKGROUND TO THE LAUNCH OF THE AXE BRAND IN THE US:

In 2002, Unilever introduced the Axe range of deodorant body sprays into the United States. The success of the
launch surpassed all expectations. Within two years, A Nielsen had recognized that Axe had become the number
one male deodorant brand in the country. A position it still holds today. However, Axe’s arrival in the marketplace
changed much more than the share composition of the deodorant market. Competitive male grooming brands took
notice of the new product form that Axe introduced to the US (deodorant body spray) and launched competitive
(and in the case of TAG, Gillette’s new body spray identical looking) products. Additionally competitors began to
mirror the ‘emotional’ approach Axe had taken to communicating. Before Axe, the category spoke very rationally to
guys, showcasing gloriously sweaty armpits and high tech solutions to keep you sweat free. Axe differentiated itself
by speaking emotionally, with no mention of product efficacy in any communication. The promise of the ‘Axe Effect’
was incredibly simple. Spraying on this product will can help get girls. Girls simply love the smell of it. The ‘Axe
effect’ became part of our targets vernacular, and strong fragrance credentials were established for the brand.

THE TASK AT HAND: LAUNCHING AXE SHOWER GEL

In 2004, we were tasked with launching the new Axe range of shower gels. A range of scented liquid shower
soaps, branded by the same variant (or flavor names) as the range of existing body sprays.
The Key marketing challenges:
1. At the time of launch, the male shower gel market in the US was in relative infancy. To succeed, we would
need to instigate a fundamental shift in showering behavior. We needed to convince guys to throw away
that trusty ‘bar soap’ that more than 90% of our target were using (and were very happy with) at the time.
2. Find a credible way to extend the brand to a new product form so soon after the brand launch. Remain true
to the master brand mission of ‘giving guys the edge in the mating game’. We needed to find a credible role
for this new product in the lives of the target.
3. Make the most of the double barreled recruitment opportunity: 1. Recruit existing users of Axe Body spray
to extend their Axe repertoire into the shower 2. Recruit those who are into the premise of what the Axe

EFFIE® Awards
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 brand is about, but don’t like the idea of a deodorant body spray
4. Differentiate ourselves once again in a male grooming market that had become increasingly similar to us.
Position Axe as a leader in this category, despite not being first to market (Old Spice already had several
body wash sku’s at the time of launch).

Campaign Objectives

Drive mass awareness of the new Axe shower gel range: Achieve a 63% Total Brand Awareness by Q4 2005
Achieve 3.5% annual dollar share of the total body wash segment in 2005.

$35 Million dollars in retail sales

Build upon the master-brand’s key personality attributes of ‘cool’ ‘masculinity’ and ‘up to date’

Use the launch of shower gel to build on the perceived sophistication of the Axe brand, which was starting to be
considered sophomoric by the some of the older guys that had been using the brand for a couple of years, without
alienating the younger guys.

Target Audience

The Axe core target is 11-24 year old guys, who quite simply obsess about hooking up with girls. The creative bulls-
eye for this campaign was 21 year olds. This represented a shift to an older group to target than the body spray
(and brand) launch work (up from 18). It’s not until guys leave home to go college, or enter the workplace that they
start to buy their own personal wash products. Additionally, we were looking to use the launch of shower gel to
increase the perceived sophistication of the Axe brand in totality. Shifting up the age to a 21 year old would
hopefully steer the creative to a more intelligent, more sophisticated tone of voice.

This is a group of guys that have a very low level of involvement with personal wash products. They put little or no
thought into what soap they use in the shower, and will use whatever is already there (what Mom bought) or
whatever is cheapest or on sale at the supermarket. Chances are at the time they used a bar soap (more than 90%
of the target audience used one at the time) which they felt worked perfectly adequately for them at that point in
time.

Creative Strategy

DEVELOPING THE RIGHT POSITIONING FOR AXE SHOWER GEL:

Instinctively, we gravitated to leveraging our fragrance credentials and bring them with us into the shower. The
fragrance message had worked brilliantly for the body spray, proving to be a plausible, credible conduit to attracting
the ladies. The shower gels had the same body spray fragrances infused within them, so we thought it wouldn’t be
too much of a leap for consumers to be convinced by messaging activated off a brief of ‘The Axe Effect is now in
the Shower’. How wrong we were. Agency research put us in our place. Firstly, guys simply did not believe that a
shower gel product could leave you with a long lasting fragrance in the same way that a body spray could.
Secondly, a fragrance driven ‘AXE effect’ message would not alleviate the concerns had guys had about the
efficacy of a shower gel product. The bar soap that they currently used worked well for them, and kept them clean.
Lastly, we discovered that there was an underlying perception of shower gels being a little feminine, a little
metrosexual. A fragrance message only added to this perceptual barrier. Guys needed to believe that this shower
gel product could keep them as clean as their bar soap currently did. Period. Clean?...Axe can’t talk about clean, we
are a fragrance brand, we don’t talk about rational product truths. The challenge became to find an Axe-like way to
talk about cleanliness that was rooted in a motivating truth . First thoughts of messaging around ‘the clean guy gets
the girl’ seemed preposterous. Girls don’t like guys because they don’t have dirty fingernails. We commissioned an
ethnographic study to dig even deeper into our guys showering motivations and habits. Here we learned about the
shower to wake up, the shower to prepare for a night out, the shower after sport, and most interestingly, the shower

EFFIE® Awards
New York American Marketing Association
116 E. 27th St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016
Tel: 212-687-3280 Fax: 212-557-9242

2006: The information available through effie.org is the property of the New York American Marketing Association and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This
brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast
the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the New York American Marketing Association.
 many of our guys take immediately after doing something that they are not particularly proud of. We branded this
the ‘The filthy shower’. A shower you take after you have done something perhaps a little ahem ‘filthy’. A strategy
was born. We would position AXE shower gel as a product that could give you a ‘spiritual’ as well as ‘physical’
cleansing (all within the context of the mating game). ‘Axe shower gel keeps filthy boys looking squeaky clean’
should work well as a strategic platform. Not only would it turn the necessary ‘clean’ message guys needed to hear
into something inspirational, it creates clear distance from the functionality of the body spray. It reinforces the
promise that the body spray works to attract girls, and the shower gel can remove the filth you have experienced as
a result. This appeared to flatter existing body spray users (by the brand acknowledging success with the ladies)
and make those who don’t use the body spray feel that they must be seriously missing a trick. Lastly, it gave the
brand the freedom to communicate in a way that is true to its DNA. Emotional, humorous, masculine and rooted in
fantasy. It would reinforce our guys belief that ‘Axe knows how I wished the world really worked

Media Strategy

DIRTY MEDIA. Media needed to ensure our ‘dirty message’ reached a mass audience, and continued to surprise
and delight our guys, hitting them when they least expected it. A ‘dirty media’ strategy was devised to amplify our
dirty messaging. We wanted to hit guys as best we could when they were either having ‘dirty thoughts’ or indeed
doing ‘dirty things’.

For mass media: Placement of the TV advertising including Baywatch, Blind Date, Laguna Beach, My Super Sweet
16, Next, The Real World, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Movie placement in American Pie 3 and The Hot Chick.
Print steered the creative to dirtier babe laden titles such as Playboy magazine, FHM, Stuff and Maxim. Online, we
bought banners in Sports Illustrated at a time that their swim suit edition of the magazine was running and ran a
unique insert in SI Swimsuit Issue..

Additionally, Axe dominated the time and place where guys are dirtiest: Spring break. Axe effectively owned two of
the largest spring break destinations for college guys in the country. Media bought at spring break included bar
posters, hotel shower curtains, hotel mirror clings, floor stickers in hotel lobbies, cups in bars, bar napkins, elevator
wraps, beach posters and bus wraps.

Media

• Television
• Newspaper
• Consumer Magazine
• Point of Purchase
• Out of Home
• Public Relations
• Interactive/Online
• Other

Other Supporting Communications Programs

• Sampling on university campus

• Sampling handouts in cinema
• Spring Break
• Health Clubs
• Retail Marketing – in-store events

Total Media Expenditures:

EFFIE® Awards
New York American Marketing Association
116 E. 27th St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016
Tel: 212-687-3280 Fax: 212-557-9242

2006: The information available through effie.org is the property of the New York American Marketing Association and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This
brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast
the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the New York American Marketing Association.
 • $10 to under $20 million

Compared to the competition, this budget is about the same.

Marketing Components

The Devil Duck. A spin on the traditional rubber ducky, a black, devil horned rubber duck was given away as added
value in a gift pack of 2 Axe shower gels, as well as a Wal-Mart specific campaign.

Evidence of Results

Pre- Axe
Advertising On-Air
Category Statements % %
Confident 43 56
Fun 54 60
Honest 15 33 A
Intelligent 25 35
Sexy 69 73
Stylish 58 63
Trustworthy 25 35
Up to date 61 67
Trendy 69 75
Heroic 37 48
Clever 31 50 A
Fearless 45 65 A
Cool 66 71
Young 63 83 A
Masculine 60 63
Base: Total (67) (48)*

Source: Millward Brown Male PW Tracker Q1 2005

Results: Axe is the number one male shower brand in the Unites states.

Achieved market 6.7% by September 2005. Source: A Nielsen 5 Channel: 12 week rolling ending 07/9/05. This is close to
double the yearly target (with 3 months left in the year to go). It is estimated that retail sales will reach $85 million
(more than double annual target) before the end of 2005 (source client data). Reached Total Brand Awareness of
70% in Q2 and unaided awareness of 13% within 5 months of launch. Source: Millward Brown Male PW Tracker Q1 2005
(achieved yearly target within 6 months of launch). Built upon master brand credentials with improved scores in
statements of ‘cool, masculine, and ‘up to date’. Source: Millward Brown Male PW Tracker Q1 2005 Significantly improved
scores implying increased sophistication, (clever/intelligent scores increasing significantly). Source: Millward Brown Male
PW Tracker Q1 2005 Among guys who saw the Axe Shower Gel Wal-Mart TV creative, unaided brand recall for Axe
Shower gel increased by 350%. Among this same group, top box purchase consideration increased by 240%.
(Source Synovate research).The strategy led to creatively fertile work. The campaign resulted in 4 finalist
nominations at the Cannes international advertising festival and won 2 Bronze Lions (1 TV and 1 Print campaign).

"The key to this success, in my view, is all based on the true partnership we have with BBH. This campaign has
been the result of an iterative crafting process we both, client and agency, have been fully involved from day one."
Carlos-Javier Gil Axe Brand Director

EFFIE® Awards
New York American Marketing Association
116 E. 27th St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016
Tel: 212-687-3280 Fax: 212-557-9242

2006: The information available through effie.org is the property of the New York American Marketing Association and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This
brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast
the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the New York American Marketing Association.