Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Unfortunately, I’m going to have to disagree with some of your statements, the first one being your remark that no one’s supposed to believe the scents found in Axe products would be attractive to women. If that were the case, why then would anyone buy their product? Remember the first and only goal of advertising is to sell the product. It’s not to poke fun at their industry or its attitudes; it’s to get their target audience to buy their product by offering them the impression that it will offer some advantage/improvement to their lives. Will their product turn women into mindless zombies? Of course not, and I don’t think anyone, including members of their target audience, would believe that for a minute. The issue here instead is the fact that the Axe brand has to present women in such a fashion to cull the notion that women would be attracted to men who use their product, which, by the way, is the point of their campaign.

As such, your idea that Axe would intentionally spend millions of marketing dollars simply to make a subtle jab at other campaigns, as opposed to attracting their target audience to their product, doesn’t wash. Besides, your argument fails to explain their tag line “Spray more, get more”. Again, I urge everyone to visit both product sites in question to really get a better impression of what ‘visions’ they are trying to associate with their product, if not to remember that ad campaigns are not designed to be attractive to all segments of the population, but for the key demographics of their target group. Just because it appears absurd to you doesn’t mean it’s not having the desired effect on those the commercials are targeting.

As for the Dove campaign, of course the purpose of it is to sell products. As I wrote in my post above, it is first and foremost an advertisement campaign (and by the way, they have indeed used “less glamorous models” in their campaigns, examples of which can be found on their site which I provide links to in my article). The problem here is that people are thinking that this could be something more noble, that Dove is actually trying to change the system as it were.

There’s a reason why you never see promotional campaigns for the parent company Unilever, because then we might see the contradictory, if not hypocritical, messages being presented to the public. And no company is interested in creating that kind of image for their brands.

Thanks for stopping by and adding your thoughts to the discussion.

As for the Dove campaign, doesn’t it seem condescending to you? They don’t actually care, they just think this will sell. If they really felt that glamorous models were promoting unhealthy self-images or whatever, they wouldn’t do some self-congratulatory campaign — they would just hire less glamorous models and try to influence the industry that way.

- Z

In regards to the Dove “Evolution” commercial, the point of the ad is not at all to tell girls that “you’re not good enough as you are”. Read the end tag line again – it says “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted”. In other words, they are stating that the notions of what defines female beauty are not based on realistic examples, but on a manufactured and manipulated presentation. As such, it’s no surprise that girls and women have difficulties in trying to reach this purported ideal since its obviously unattainable. Also, if you check out the links I provided in my article to the various Dove sites, you’d see that their campaign is about women celebrating who they are and what they look like at any age, and not feeling like they have to attempt to fit into a very restrictive definition of what female beauty is.

As for the Axe commercial, I can’t imagine where you got the impression that the man in the commercial is the sex object. Without question, he’s the object of the women’s obvious desire, but men are not being objectified here as sexual objects like women often are. Indeed, notice that unlike these women who can’t help but be drawn to him, the man in the piece is clearly in control since it’s the man whose using the product to pull the women toward him. In fact, looking at that one scene showing his outstretched arms spraying the product, you can’t help but get the impression of him being like a matador, attracting the bull toward him whenever he chooses. So, how does that make the man the sex object here and not the women when he’s the one putting things into action while the women have no choice but to react without thought? And yes, there are men out there who’d rather be loved or appreciated for their other traits – as much as women do – but obviously those men are not a part of this product’s target audience and why such notions won’t appear in any Axe commercials.

It’s easy to be dismissive about the realities to conform to these notions of female beauty or how the sexes interact. But as a parent, I can tell you that’s not only unrealistic, it’s unfair to your children because it denies them the chance to break the cycle and feel not only respect for who they are, but love themselves for what they look like, even if they don’t match the notions of beauty they see paraded about on TV, magazines or in the movies.

Again, thanks for stopping by Debbie, and for sharing your thoughts on the subject.

For the second commercial. AXE is playing this whole thing up for the men who are sex driven. It shows scantly dressed Amazonian women [surely hand-picked for this commercial] running wilding through the forest, climbing mountains, with a back-drop of romping dolphins in the sea – giving it a playful feeling of community, all running toward some goal. The twist was they were not simply going swimming in the water. It ends showing this man wearing a supposedly alluring scent to attract all these women. What a bunch of bull. It makes the man out to be the sex object. Don’t they want to be loved for their intelligence, accomplishments, ability to be a good father, sincerity, honesty, responsibility and other really good traits?

Who watches tv these days anyway. Too many commercials.

Find your purpose in life and go after that.

DebbyBruck, HomeopathyWorldCommunity