Monday, January 9, 2012

Marketing Monday: Now Axe Is Targeting Women Who Want 'An Edge In The Mating Game'

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Monday, January 9, 2012

Now Axe Is Targeting Women Who Want 'An Edge In The Mating Game'

Kim Bhasin | Jan. 9, 2012, 11:10 AM | 557 | 1

Axe rose to the top of the body spray game by selling itself to nerdy teenage guys.

But now, it's going after women too, reports Andrew Adam Newman at The New York Times.

Axe's new Anarchy fragrance will be targeted to both men and women, with a similar promise that dousing yourself with the spray will instantly attract the opposite sex.

Tomorrow, Axe is coming out with an interactive graphic novel to promote the new product, along with the first of two commercials to be released on its Facebook page.

It'll be interesting to see exactly how parent brand Unilever goes about marketing Anarchy to appeal to women.

David Kolbusz, a creative director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty explained to Newman, “Before, an Axe commercial was always about a guy spraying himself and a girl being attracted, and Axe giving him an edge in the mating game, whereas now women also have something to spray on themselves, and consequently there’s more of an equilibrium between the sexes.”

Another important question is how Axe is going to pull it off without scaring off some of its core users. When you expand a brand to areas beyond the audience that you've stuck with for ages, you risk undermining your own brand and hurting your credibility.