« Selling a product? Hire a sexy blond for your advertising! | Main | Axe Body Spray (Oh, so very irresistible to women) »

Axe Vice

Context: This is an online commercial for Axe Vice products. It was created by the Axe company and posted on their website and I found it on youtube. It is selling Axe Vice body wash, deoderant and body spray.

Content: The premise of this ad is that when a "nice" girl smells a guy with Axe Vice scent, she looses control and commits "lust" crimes and becomes a "naughty" girl. The "nice" girls were all cute, young, shy and skinny, while the "naughty" girls were older, larger, and rude.

Form: The ad is made to look like an informational news story, like a segment of Dateline. They interview an "expert" and show clips from a court room.

Reading: If the roles were reversed, and this was a secent that when men smelled it on a woman he went crazy and commited "lust" crimes, as Axe calls them, there would be an outrage. However, since it's men being attacked by cute girls, it's sexy. I think that this promotional campaign is disgusting, and it feeds into the stereotypes that it's imposible to rape a man because he is open to any sexual experience (which, from working at a rape crisis center, I know is not true). It also feeds into the stereotype that girls are either "nice" or "naughty" which is an unrealistic dichotomy.

Post a comment

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the University of Minnesota.