Axe: "Even Angels Will Fall"

Axe is a company that sells men's grooming products. Their target audience is usually young men from the ages of 14 to 25. Axe provides any kind of toiletry product from body wash and shampoo to deodorant and cologne. For years their commercials have specialized in selling the desired effects of their products, but not the products themselves. They essentially proclaim to consumers that if they buy Axe they are buying masculinity in a can. They make young men believe that manliness can be bought at their local pharmacy.

In one commercial, hundreds of women in bikinis run toward something. As they get closer and closer to a beach, there appear more and more women. Towards the end, the viewer sees that they are all running towards a single man on the beach. He is covering himself in Axe body spray. The implied effect, of course, is that Axe is attracting billions of beautiful women (in one commercial it even attracts angels) to a single man. There have been some criticisms toward the advertisements. The Huffington Post writes that Axe offends women by depicting them as sex-crazed objects at the disposal of horny men. The ads makes a man believe that by buying their products he can be with any woman he wants, no matter how beautiful she is and he isn’t.

The potential psychological danger of the commercials is that if young men use the products and still are ignored by women then they will believe that they are not manly enough. That, of course, is the purpose of the ads. They play on male insecurities. If men don’t buy the products then they’ll believe they’re missing out on women and if they do but don’t get girls they’ll think they're not masculine enough. The producers of grooming products, like Axe, use ideology to make a profit. They know what young men want, but more importantly, what they fear.