Case Analysis on Unilever (Axe and Dove)

Unilever—the manufacturer of several home care, food, and personal care brands—understands
the importance of using personal marketing communications to target specific age groups,
demographics, and lifestyles. As a result, it has developed some of the most successful brands in
the world, including Axe, a male grooming brand, and Dove, a personal care brand aimed at
women.

Axe is the most popular male grooming brand in the world and Unilever’s best seller. The brand,
which offers a wide range of personal care products from body spray to body gel, deodorant, and
shampoo, was launched in 1983 and introduced in the United States in 2002. Axe targets 15- to
25-year-old males who are interested in improving their appeal to the opposite sex and “keeping
a step ahead in the mating game.” Most Axe ads use humor and sex and often feature skinny,
average guys attracting beautiful girls by the dozen. The result: the brand is aspirational and
approachable, and the lighthearted tone hits home with young men. In one recent global
campaign called “Bom-chika-wah-wah” (after the pop culture phrase that mimics a guitar sound
from 1970s adult movies), gorgeous women are instantly attracted to average guys through a
single whiff of Axe deodorant or body spray.

Axe has won numerous advertising awards not only for its creative but also for its effective use
of unconventional media channels. From edgy online videos to video games, blogs, chat rooms,
and mobile apps, the Axe brand engages young adult males on their own turf. In Colombia, for
example, a female Axe Patrol scopes out the bar and club scene and sprays men with Axe body
sprays. Unilever Marketing Director Kevin George explained, “This is all about going beyond
the 30-second TV commercial to create a deeper bond with our guy.”

Axe knows where to reach its consumers. It advertises only on male-dominated networks such
as MTV, ESPN, Spike, and Comedy Central. It partners with the NBA and NCAA, which draw
in younger male audiences than many other sports. Print ads appear in Playboy, Rolling Stone,
GQ, and Maxim. Axe’s online efforts via Facebook, Twitter, chat rooms, and banner ads help
drive consumers back to its Web site (www.theaxeeffect.com) where Axe continues to build
brand loyalty. For example, one ad costing $200,000 featured men in a small town in Alaska
who use Axe to attract women. It was viewed more than 10 million times online.

Axe also understands that it has to work hard to keep the brand fresh, relevant, and cool with its
fickle young audience. So it launches a new fragrance every year and refreshes its online and
advertising communications constantly. Axe’s success in personal marketing has lifted the brand
to become the leader in what many had thought was the mature $2.4 billion deodorant category.

On the other side of the personal marketing spectrum, Unilever’s Dove brand speaks to women
with a different tone and message. In 2003, Dove shifted away from it traditional advertising
touting the brand’s benefit of one-quarter moisturizing cream and the results experienced after
the seven-day Dove test. Its “Real Beauty” campaign instead celebrates “real women” of all
shapes, sizes, ages, and colors. The campaign arose from research revealing that only 2 percent
of women worldwide considered themselves beautiful, and an overwhelming majority strongly
agree that “the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty.” Dove set out to
speak personally to women about the idea that “beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.”

The first phase of the “Real Beauty” campaign featured nontraditional female models and asked
consumers to judge their looks online (Wrinkled? Wonderful? Oversized? Outstanding?) at
www.campaignforrealbeauty.com. The personal questions shocked many but created such a
grand PR buzz that Dove continued the campaign. The second phase featured candid and
confident images of curvy, full-bodied women—again, smashing stereotypes and touching home
with the majority of women all over the world while promoting Dove skin products such as
Intensive Firming Cream, Lotion, and Body Wash. The multimedia campaign was thoroughly
integrated, combining traditional TV and print ads with new forms of media, such as real-time
voting for models on cell phones and tabulated displays of results on giant billboards.

In addition, Dove’s Web site became a crucial component for initiating dialogue between
women. The third phase of the campaign, called “Pro-Age,” featured older, nude women and
asked questions like, “Does beauty have an age limit?” Almost instantly, the company heard
positive feedback from its older consumers. In addition, Dove released two Dove Films, one of
which, Evolution, won both a Cyber and film Grand Prix at the International Advertising
Festival. The film shows a rapid-motion view of an ordinary-looking woman transformed by
makeup artists, hairdressers, lighting, and digital retouching to end up looking like a billboard
supermodel. The end tagline is: “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.” The film
became an instant viral hit and has been viewed more than 15 million times online and by more
than 300 million people worldwide, including in news coverage and other channels of
distribution. In total, Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” has touched women all over the world
and been mentioned in over 800 articles in leading newspapers from Le Parisien to The Times in
London.

Although both campaigns have sparked much controversy and debate for different reasons, they
have been credited with boosting Unilever’s sales and market share all over the globe.

Questions

1. What makes personal marketing work? Why are Dove and Axe so successful at it?
2. Can personal marketing go too far in a company? Why or why not?
3. Is there a conflict of interests in the way Unilever markets to women and young men? Is it
undoing all the good that might be done in the “Campaign for Real Beauty” by making women
sex symbols in Axe ads? Discuss.