Slides created by Lokendra Verma, IIT Bombay, during a marketing internship by Prof. Sameer Mathur, IIM Lucknow.

1. Unilever (Axe and Dove)
Communicating Value: Managing digital
communications – online, social media and mobile

2. Unilever
• Founded in 1930
• A British-Dutch Multinational consumer goods
company
• Owner of 400 brands
• World’s 3rd-largest consumer goods company

4. AXE
• Known as LYNX in UK, Ireland, Australia,
New Zealand and China
• Launched in 1983
• Most popular male grooming brand in the
world
• Unilever’s best selling brand, sold in 70+
countries

5. MARKETING AND
COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
• Lures males to attract opposite sex
• Uses humor and sex
• Featuring skinny, average guy attracting
beautiful girls
• Brand becomes more appealing to youngsters
• Keeps launching new fragrances each year

6. ‘Find Your Magic’ campaign
• Rejecting rigid male stereotypes
• Wanted to give to guys a sense of confidence
and liberate them from stereotypes

7. ‘Axe Apollo Space Academy’
campaign
• 23 participants from 23 countries cleared
tests
• Will get free trip to space and back
• Contest launched in 2013 via social media
• Specialized ‘Axe Apollo’ products launched

8. Advertisements on male-dominated
networks like
• MTV
• ESPN
• Spike
• Comedy Central

9. Other media used
• YouTube - Super Bowl commercial (watched
100 million+ times)
• Print ads in magazines such as Playboy,
Rolling Stone, GQ, Maxim
• Website - TheAxeEffect.com

10. Unconventional Media used
• Online videos
• Video games
• Chat rooms
• Mobile apps

11. DOVE
• Launched in 1957
• Fastest growing hair category brand in
India

12. MARKETING AND
COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY
• Communication to women in an altogether
different tone from Axe
• Runs ‘Real Beauty Campaign’

13. ‘Real Beauty’ campaign, 2004
• Reinforced that ‘beauty comes in all shapes, sizes,
ages and colors’
• Just 4% women in the world feel they are
beautiful
• Campaign celebrated ‘real women’ and spoke to
them personally
• Tagline ‘No wonder our perception of beauty is
distorted’

14. Real Beauty Campaign
• First Phase
– Asked viewer to judge looks of non-traditional
female models online
– Created huge publicity and public relations
• Second Phase
– Featured Candid and confident images of curvy,
full-bodied women
• Third Phase ‘Pro-Age’
– Featured older, nude women
– Questions like “Does beauty has an age limit?”

15. Media appearance
• Short films like Daughters, Evolution, Onslaught, Amy
• Talk shows
• Women’s magazines
• The Ad Makeover campaign, in Facebook to
replace negative ads with positive ones

16. Self-Esteem fund, 2006
• Aimed at helping women feel better about their
looks
• Showed statistics demonstrating how young
women and girls are more apt to have distorted
views of beauty
• ‘Free Being Me’ campaign launched in
association with World Association of Girls
guides & Girls Scouts, aiming to increase ‘self-
esteem and body confidence’

17. What makes personal marketing work? Why are Dove and Axe
so successful at it?
• Personal marketing works because it hits the consumer at his heart
• It allows the marketer to connect better with its audience
• The marketer can uniquely target its audience, based on
demographics, age groups & lifestyle
• Dove and Axe struck the right audience at the right time to garner
their attention
• Unilever designed specific campaigns to attract its target market

18. Can a company take personal marketing too far? Explain.
• Unilever focuses on personal marketing, and it can reach far too deep
• In personal marketing, promotional contents are linked directly with
the consumers
• The brand may receive negative feedback if some sentiments are hurt
• Therefore, this type of marketing tactics should be planned with
utmost care

19. Is there a conflict of interests in the way Unilever markets to women
and young men? Is it undoing all the goods that might be done in the
“Campaign for Real Beauty” by making women sex symbols in Axe
Ads? Discuss.
• Yes, the contrast of content can be observed clearly in advertising of Axe
and Dove brands
• In a way, it is a conflict of interests
• Both actually have different target audience to cater to, and both have
different points of view
• Women are portrayed as sex symbols in Axe advertisements, which should
be kept in regulation

20. SUMMARY
• Unilever and its brands
• Axe
– Marketing and communications strategy
– Campaigns – ‘find your magic’ & ‘Axe Apollo
Space Academy’
– Media and advertisements
• Dove
– Marketing and communications strategy
– ‘Real beauty campaign’ , ‘Self esteem fund’ & ‘Free
being Me campaigns
– Award winning short films

21. DISCLAIMER
Created by Lokendra Verma, IIT
Bombay, during a marketing internship
by Prof. Sameer Mathur, IIM Lucknow.
Thank You!