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Jewish World Review July 19, 2005 / 12 Taamuz, 5765 Nasty Axe-is: sexy ads, stinky teens By Jerry Large
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
They've been turned loose, and you're likely to smell them anywhere.
If you've been in a middle or high school hallway recently, your
nose has already been treated to the acrid pounding of Axe
Deodorant.
But the rest of you, prepare. School's out, and teenage boys doused
in the stuff are walking the streets in clouds of odor. You don't
want to get closer than 50 feet.
If you've seen commercials or print ads for the product, you know
it's supposed to attract people rather than repel them. In
particular, it is supposed to make young men irresistible to young
women.
The manufacturers aren't selling deodorant so much as they are
selling sex and manliness, which is why the product is so popular
with 12- and 13-year-olds, who haven't quite got a grip on either of
those things yet.
These are kids who a year or so before behaved as if showering could
be fatal and members of the opposite gender were poison.
Now they measure shower time in geologic spans and instant message
each other rumors about who is sweet on whom, though this being the
rap era their discussions are a bit more earthy than that.
So they were ripe (so to speak) for the Axe campaign.
Unilever introduced Axe to the United States market in 2002 with
television commercials showing beautiful women attacking male
mannequins that had been sprayed with Axe, which of course drove the
women insane with desire.
It really is dangerous. Last month a 12-year-old Alaskan boy caught
fire using the stuff. He'd sprayed himself, but the smell was
overwhelming, so he lit a scented candle to cancel out some of the
noxious fumes, and boom.
Makes you wonder: what happens when a bunch of Axed boys gather
around a Bunsen burner in chemistry class?
Usually it's just the odor that's dangerous.
Kids at my son's middle school had Axe fights between classes. No
fatalities, but pee-yew.
More seriously, a couple of weeks ago, police in New Hampshire took
a high-school student into custody for spraying a can of Axe while
on his school bus. The mist sickened the driver, who had to stop the
bus.
Axe, which comes in several scents, was formulated to be really
strong so young guys would know they were getting something manly at
the first whiff.
One of the folks in my dentist's office told me about a sixth-grader
who sprays Axe at girls. So far none of them has ripped his clothes
off, though if he were to spray the wrong girl she might rip his
ears off.
We banned the spray cans from our house, but my son started carrying
the dry version around in his saxophone case.
"Are you still wearing Axe?"
"Axe?"
"Yes. Axe?"
"Uh. Yeah, but you can't smell it. It's just a little bit."
Believe me, I can smell it, and worse, it makes my nose tingle.
Walking into my son's room makes me sneeze.
I only tolerate it because there are more important battles to fight
and because I figure that, like most fads, this one won't last too
long.
Or at least not with any one kid. The Axe craze does have legs
within a certain age group.
Two years after Unilever introduced the product in the U.S. it was
the top selling male body spray, a category Unilever invented but
that other deodorant makers jumped into immediately. Being a
deodorant wasn't enough. Being a cologne wasn't enough. Users are
supposed to cover themselves in Axe, and they do.
This week, on another Web site, Unilever debuted a game in which
players compete for the attentions of 100 beautiful women.
Axe isn't the only advertiser that is leaving subtlety behind.
Remember all the attention the Carl's Jr. commercial with Paris
Hilton got?
Some folks in advertising are saying you have to take things up a
notch to get the attention of young males today, and some trend
watchers are saying it's part of a broader backlash against
so-called political correctness.
Either way, you might want to hold your nose.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Jerry Large is a Seattle Times columnist. Comment by clicking here.
06/27/05: Let's face it, we're pretty superficial: Study after study shows
skin deep is about as far © 2005, Seattle Times; Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
