Axe (brand)

Axe or Lynx is a brand of male grooming products, owned by the British-Dutch company Unilever and marketed towards the young male demographic. It is known as Lynx in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and China. In other countries such as South Africa and the United States it is known as Axe.[1][2]

This article is about men's grooming products. For other uses, see Axe (disambiguation).

Lynx/Axe

Product typeMen's grooming products
OwnerUnilever
CountryFrance
Introduced6 June 1983 (1983-06-06)
Related brandsDove
MarketsWorldwide
Websitewww.axe.com/us/en/home.html
www.lynxexpression.com

Products
See also: List of Axe products
Lynx Deodorants; Apollo, Black and Africa
Collection of many Axe products

Axe was launched in France in 1983 by Unilever.[3] It was inspired by another of Unilever's brands, Impulse. Unilever introduced many products in the range, but were forced to use the name Lynx in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand due to trademark issues with the Axe name. In addition, some countries (such as South Africa) introduced the brand as EGO.[4]

Scents have evolved over time. From 1983 until about 1989, the variant names were descriptions of the fragrances and included Musk, Spice, Amber, Oriental, and Marine. From 1990 until 1996, geographic names for fragrances were used. In 2009, the brand launched an eight-centimetre container called the Axe Bullet. The brand has also extended into other areas.

Most scent names usually have a shower gel to accompany them and sometimes an antiperspirant/deodorant stick and an aftershave lotion. The Axe Shampoos come in three different sizes, regular size, travel or sample size of and XL bottles. Axe also ships a shower scrub tool called the Axe Detailer.[5]

Axe also launches limited edition variants from time to time that may be on sale for a few months or over a year.

Marketing

From the 1990s, Axe advertisements portrayed various ways the products supposedly helped men attract women. In 2003, the advertising in the UK for the Pulse fragrance showed how it supposedly gave "geeky" men the confidence to woo women with dance. In 2005, Consumer Expert Dr. Vince Wong, CEO of Insights Interactive, was hired to help explore cross cultural behavioral motivations of their young male adult consumers. This fed into development of the brand globally, resulting in award-winning global communication campaigns.[6] This was followed by Touch, Unlimited,[7] Clix,[8] and in 2007, Vice,[8] which was marketed on a theme of making "nice" women become "naughty".

PR controversies

Adverse publicity has been generated by the product's advertisements for encouraging sexual promiscuity and sexism.[9] The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood claimed that Bartle Bogle Hegarty's work on Axe "epitomizes the sexist and degrading marketing that can undermine girls' healthy development."

On January 12, 2008 12-year-old Daniel Hurley from Derbyshire, England died in a hospital five days after collapsing at his home. The medical coroner ruled that he had suffered from cardiac arrhythmia and died from heart failure as a result of spraying large amounts of Lynx in a confined space.[10] Videos on social networking sites depicted teens setting themselves on fire. The trend resulted in multiple injuries.[11] After these incidents occurred, the company created two ads, one against the use of Axe as an inhalant, and the other warning of its flammability.[12]

Axe selected 23 astronauts for their Axe Apollo Space Academy, with the 23 countries represented being marked in color.

Axe Apollo Space Academy (AASA)

Axe initiated a marketing campaign whereby the company would select people in a worldwide contest to become astronauts who would fly sub-orbital space missions aboard the XCOR Lynx spaceplane.[13] On December 5, 2013, Axe announced the 23 space cadets,[14][15] one of which was Chino Roque, who had won the extensive training competition held at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The winners were from 23 different countries, some of which did not have space agencies or had not produced any astronauts before. The suborbital rides would take place after the unbuilt XCOR Lynx rocket would have passed flight test objectives.

Product Placement

Axe had a product placement deal with Sega to feature its deodorant in the game Yakuza 3.[16][17] This licence was not renewed for the 2018 remaster, and it was instead replaced by a generic product.

gollark: Do not. This probably costs more than a new power supply.
gollark: You should use PCPartPicker for investigating parts.
gollark: Closer to £35 really.
gollark: IIRC it is about £30 for 8GB of RAM.
gollark: Consider the AMD FX-9590 or whatever it was. It reached 5GHz. However, because Bulldozer is terrible, it was really bad.

References
  1. About Axe and Lynx on the Unilever website
  2. Van Den Bergh, Joeri; Behrer, Mattias (2011). How Cool Brands Stay Hot: Branding to Generation. Kogan Page Publishers. pp. 130–131.
  3. Feifer, Jason (7 August 2012). "How Axe Built A Highly Scientific, Totally Irresistible Marketing Machine Built On Lust". Fast Company. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  4. Van Den Bergh, Joeri; Behrer, Mattias (2013). How Cool Brands Stay Hot: Branding to Generation. Kogan Page Publishers. p. 145. ISBN 9780749468057.
  5. Wong|November 25, Elaine; 2008. "Unilever Puts Axe Shower Tool on Display with SnapAds". www.adweek.com. Retrieved 15 October 2019.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  6. "Insightsinteractive.com". insightsinteractive.com.
  7. "New Lynx fragrance set to deliver 'Unlimited' sales". Unilever.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2 June 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-09.
  8. "Lynx- Click". Unilever.co.uk. Archived from the original on 6 January 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-09.
  9. Harris, Paul (9 July 2006). "The Menaissance: The American male is learning to flex his muscles again". London: Guardian. Retrieved 9 May 2009.
  10. "Boy, 12, Died After Spraying Deodorant: Lynx Aerosol Triggered Heart Condition In Daniel Hurley". News.sky.com. Archived from the original on 12 March 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-09.
  11. Qadar, Sana (28 September 2007). "Teen burned in popular body spray stunt". CTV.ca. Archived from the original on 6 April 2012. Retrieved 18 December 2016.
  12. "Responsible Use". The Axe Effect. Retrieved 27 January 2010.
  13. Newman, Andrew Adam (10 January 2013). "Launching a Fragrance Line (In a Manner of Speaking)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  14. Spaceflight, Miriam Kramer 2013-12-08T13:35:46Z. "23 Axe Apollo Fans with the Right Stuff Win Free Space Trips". Space.com. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  15. Cassidy, Anne (8 January 2014). "Inside The Axe Space Bro-gram". Fast Company. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  16. Yakuza 3 screenshot
  17. Sega (November 2008). "Ryū ga Gotoku 3 Adventure Digest (『龍が如く3』アドベンチャー・ダイジェスト)". Ryū ga Gotoku 3 official website. Retrieved 2 July 2019.
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