We’re Pretty Pumped About AXE’s New ‘Find Your Magic’ Ads – and You Should Be Too
Thanks to some insidious algorithm that I only vaguely understand — and because of some whopping clues I’ve been leaving on my page for the past decade or so — Facebook knows a lot about me. And slips ads into my Newsfeed that it figures I will be interested in. Often, it’s wrong. Like when it assumes, because I’m a man who has written about and searched online for grooming products, that I’d be interested in seeing a new ad from AXE.
You know AXE. The dude-bro punchline in a convenient spray? The purveyors of fragrances that embody junior high dances, tattered Maxim photo spreads of Jennifer Love Hewitt, and unwelcome erections? Everyone knows AXE. It’s a product that is so ubiquitous that is has become a signifier unto itself. What’s that guy like? Well, he wears AXE…
Only…what the hell is this?
I click on the ad, and apparently, AXE has grown up. It doesn’t represent those things anymore, or at least, it doesn’t want to. And that’s kind of thrilling. Not only because it means that a brand like AXE has figured out that inclusivity is a strength (both socially and commercially), and that masculinity isn’t a monolith, but it’s exciting because, well, if that message is understood and expounded by a brand as traditionally one-dimensional as AXE Body Spray, that means, on a much broader scale, the good guys are winning.
Men can be men and like other men. They can be men and wear high heels and kill it on the dance floor. They can be men, even if they aren’t models, or even if they don’t turn women into sex-crazed jungle cats by spraying themselves with body spray. You know how I know? Because that smoky movie-trailer baritone says so. To hear him talk about killing it in heels gives goosebumps. It’s a message that isn’t necessarily new, but it is new coming from the one-track world of global marketing. To watch the ad, created by 72andSunny Amsterdam, is to marvel that we’re living in a new world. One that probably doesn’t smell too bad, either.
