Axe recently released a commercial with two women posing in a talk show where they're selling a new product from Axe. It's designed to help you wash yourself in the shower, but has some not so subtle innuendos about male genitalia. Obviously this campaign is intended for an age range of probably 17 to 30 something year old men with a crude sense of humor, and I can see how it might be offensive to the general viewer. They're using sex to sell, though I'll admit it's in a clever way.
Axe's "Clean your balls" commercial
The Seattle Times talked about the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has recently written letters of complaint to Unilever (who also owns Dove) to restrict this "sexism." Some people who look at Unilever as a company say that the way the women are treated in Dove commercial and the way they are treated in Axe commercials needs to be addressed because it is somewhat hypocritical in the messages they both send out. Click here to read more about this article.
I am personally not very conservative but I can see how people would be disgusted. It's not discreet in it's message and it's very targeted to one specific audience and doesn't seem to care that it might offend others. In this day and age it's hard to not use humor in advertising because it's a very strong way to get your message across to the masses. It's a powerful tool in marketing and advertising and they made a smart move by making it viral as soon as possible. I'm not a huge fan of this commercial personally, but I can't help but laugh. I'm sure the PR people at Axe have their hands full right now making sure the image of Axe isn't tainted too badly. After a company uses campaigns like this I'm sure they're glad they have someone to protect their image.
Rumor has it that the Axe commercial had an original commercial that was longer and more "ballsy." Apparently it got canned after one day of airing, but this still provided Axe with plenty of advertising after people's curiosity.
Original "banned" commercial
Previous Axe campaigns
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
Hey, that's Joy from My Name is Earl.
wow talk about pushing the limit. I found out in my gender communication class that Axe and Dove are owned by the same company, crazy to think their ads are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum.
I showed both the Axe Clean Balls commercial and the Dove Evolution video to a couple friends. When I told them that they are both owned by Unilever, they came to the scholarly conclusion that, "that's messed up."
I love how people aren't arguing that these commercials get taken off the air. People get mad at us at best buy for showing pirates of the Caribbean as a demo on our tv's because of the "vulgarness" and their kids have to walk past it to view...even though its only PG and to have a woman talking like that on public TV is just wrong!
I'm not going to lie the first time I saw this commercial I couldn't help but laugh! I can't believe it's on t.v, but I think it's pretty typical of Axe, they are always coming up with clever commercials.
I showed it to my husband. He thought it was hilarious, but readily admitted, he would never buy the product. Then again, he would never buy any body wash.
I think it's pretty funny but I blushed when we watched this in class. And it takes a lot to make me do that!
I understand the controversy but it does get them a lot of exposure and media coverage
The first time I saw this commercial I was super suprised. I didn't know if it was going to be one of those fluke commercials or not, obviously not! It's a funny commercial but only to those who understand it, and could potentially be bad to the kiddos.
Post a Comment