Comments on: Credit where it’s due, they inspired one of the more inspired Family Guy cutaways in recent memory

By: fenzel

fenzel — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 02:40:47 +0000

Minze — sounds like time for some crossover fanfiction!

By: Gab

Gab — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:52:04 +0000

Note you don’t see ads for women’s fragrances where men are a) rampaging after or b) stumbling in the presence of a woman wearing the fragrance being advertised. In all of the ads I’ve seen for women’s fragrances, if there *is* some sort of swooning man, the woman is never taken off-guard, but instead presented as a temptress, as if she planned it all from the very, very beginning. In the AXE ads (as well as ones for all sorts of other things, yeah), the man tends to be surprised, at least for a moment before he starts dousing himself in more of the stuff.

And that chocolate thing is just fucking creepy.

By: Minze

Minze — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 11:03:05 +0000

Why can’t they make ONE ad with all the bullshit and get it over and done with? The waiter would be using axe AND he’d be carrying a tray full of chocolate, the woman would embarass herself and just shrug if off because… oh, her wonderbra gives her confidence? And the guy at the table… perhaps we could give him a beer and a wingman? And some pot noodles. In his new car.

By: Stokes

Stokes — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:49:18 +0000

That chocolate one Matt posted the link to is actually kind of touching. The women are physically ripping chocolate-man to shreds, and he’s just overjoyed that they’re paying attention to him.

And yes, the subtext is pretty distressing. “If you let a woman get close to you, she will boil the skin off your arm in a fondue pot.” Maybe they’re now marketing to guys who are afraid of women? Which might not be a bad idea. After all, they’ve always been marketing to the kind of guy who would rather use a magic hottie-attracting deoderant to pick up women, rather than actually (yikes!) TALKING to them.

But there’s another message that’s more blatant AND more offensive. The old Axe ads tried to get us to believe that Axe would make women want to have sex with you. And that’s just silly, because women don’t HAVE sexual desire. Instead, they have CHOCOLATE! Am I right, fellas?

It’s almost too stupid to get annoyed by. But it reinforces a harmful and persistant binary opposition: man=sexual-aggressive-dirty/woman=sexless-passive-pure.

By: Professor Coldheart

Professor Coldheart — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:29:29 +0000

Pete – this lends weight to my privately held theory that humans will start speaking in Google search strings by 2017 or so.

By: fenzel

fenzel — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 17:54:01 +0000

Actually, if you google “girls tits sex smell spray,” the first two hits are videos of Axe commercials, including one in this post. No joke.

By: Professor Coldheart

Professor Coldheart — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 15:23:12 +0000

I applaud AXE for removing "innuendo" from the marketers' toolbox. I envision a gradually coarsening chain of ads (picture a montage a la Idiocracy) that make the AXE Body Spray Value Proposition more explicit. 2008: "AXE: Now With More Bom-Chicka-Waawaa" 2010: "AXE: Taking The Luck Out Of Getting Lucky" 2013: "AXE: You'll Get Something That Rhymes With 'Lucky', All Right" 2014: "AXE: I'm Sorry, Were We Not Being Clear Enough? Women Will Have Sex With You." 2019: "AXE: Girls Tits Sex Smell Spray"

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:25:18 +0000

Great observation! But is there anything to be added about this recent campaign?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgfzdgWgEZ4
Or is that just weird and creepy without saying much about women?