Claudia Pisarek's Marketing Blog

For the past couple of years, several Axe commercials have been deemed unethical in their portrayal of women. They have started controversy and sparked conversation on whether it is just humorous or derogatory of women. Although some individual see humour, many women across the country see the advertisements as disrespectful and portraying women “as brainless (sometimes headless) objects who exist to please men.” (1) As Pamola Aleman states in her article, Axe connects with their target audience successfully but also portrays the message that women are mere objects and used for entertainment. (2) Not only offensive to many women, Axe fully exaggerates the effect of the product. One of the “Universal Marketing Practices” stated by the Canadian Marketing Association is “Accuracy of Representation [in which] marketers must not misrepresent a product, service, or marketing program” (3) Axe’s commercials exaggerate the effect to attract more users but through this, give high and false expectations.  Axe is completely using the tactic of ‘sex sells’ but doesn’t it cross the line?

Sources:

(1) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/axe-commercial-suggests-that-women-ruin-everything_n_3689409.html

(2) http://medialiteracyproject.org/deconstructions/axe-effect

(3) page 8 http://www.the-cma.org/regulatory/code-of-ethics