<span class="htext1"> Innovating Brands:</span> Axe

Countless brands were launched over the decade. Some stood out as innovative products or were promoted in an intriguing way. Axe is a great example of advertising making a brand

In 1999, Hindustan Lever (now Unilever) launched a new brand in the Indian market, which it labelled as a weapon of seduction. The message struck home and Axe’s advertising campaigns have been conversation-hoggers ever since.

The advertising invariably features a boy next door and playfully records his transformation into an irresistible woman-magnet. The brand later branched out as a range of male grooming products. This includes deodorant sticks, roll-ons, anti-perspirants, aftershaves and shower gels. According to Unilever, it is now the world’s most popular male grooming brand.

The company has made it a point of constantly expanding the fragrance range. In India, it was available till last year in five fragrances - Dimension, Java, Phoenix, Pulse, Voodoo. But what really makes the brand stand out is its advertising. It makes consumers smile – and it makes them buy.

It is a measure of the way its communication tests the limits that the brand has won 10 Cannes Lions from across the world so far. According to the company, in Colombia, for instance, an Axe Patrol – made up of women, naturally – drops in on bars and night clubs, frisking men and spraying them with Axe.

The Axe range is priced in a band of Rs 135-160 in India. The company also launched a male deodorant under the Rexona brand, and this is priced lower. However, Axe primarily has to contend with Set Wet Zatak from Paras Pharmaceuticals.

In India the brand made a big splash last year around the launch of Dark Temptation, a chocolate-based fragrance. The TV commercial had the typical Axe guy turning into a chocolate man on spraying himself. The rest of the commercial is about how women want to lick him, get a piece of him. What probably was too much for the moral brigade was when a women in a bus bends to bite a bit of his behind. By the time the ad was yanked off the air following an official objection, it had probably done its job. It returned in an edited version.

India was the first Asian country to get Dark Temptation. It has already been launched in Europe and Argentina.