UCanBCom

Well, they’ve officially done it. My life is now officially filled with Unilever, Dove and Madmen. I’ve been hooked on this show for a while, but in the most recent season, Madmen has been accompanied by a unique campaign of Unilever commercials. The commercials run only during Madmen episodes and mimic the show in many ways. Actors, costumes, subject matter and more are modeled after the advertising agency in Madmen. Here’s a video of the first one that I came about;

Now this really tied my life together, since I have constantly been working on Dove projects for my marketing class at school. It was pretty entertaining to see the above commercial pop up, as it actually outlined precisely what I’d been working on for my projects.

The channel on youtube has many more commercials for Unilever, representing the same characters and style. Some are pretty hilarious, and actually quite clever commercials. Helmans, Klondike, Vaseline, Suave (but not Axe?) have their own bits. Other than playing off the Madmen style/era for a little old fashioned hilarity, the commercials strive to remind customers of Unilever’s roots and the sentimental side that homely products can bring to the table (literally and figuratively) in a world when there are so many brands and products without that kind of sentimental attachment. In my opinion, a nice differentiation to add some value to Unilever products.

So here’s the second men’s body care commercial in a row…

Same product. Same target consumer. A slightly less abrasive approach, but all in all, I’d say it’s the same pitch. Yes, I know that Axe is PRO MASCULINITY and Dove is the Beauty in every woman, but I’m telling you it’s all the same.

Axe says be a man and pick up girls. In Dove’s new Men+Care product they use essentially the same approach; Dove tells the tale of Man’s “Journey to Comfort.” Now there’s a few similarities in the two campaigns… The messages are the same in the end, with a little twist to differentiate the two ads. Dove’s tag at the end of this commercial is “Be comfortable in your own skin.” Absolutely, this is a great tag that’s fairly witty, to the point and a good moral lesson for all types of people. Although the goal isn’t even close to identical to any of Axe’s campaigns, it still leads me to conclude the same thing from both ads…be comfortable as yourself, attract others.

Anyways, the truth is I don’t know how much I respect either of these campaigns. And even more, I’m a little surprised to see a campaign from Dove actually telling Men how to live their lives. After all, don’t they explicitly and strongly encourage women to be individuals with high self-confidence no matter how they are?  But who can blame them with the kind of stuff Axe puts out on a regular basis. I guess that Unilever’s counterparts have to play off eachother for the best marketing result—which obviously is far and beyond most others in their industry.

In case you were wondering, the similarities don’t end at the psychological stuff. Compare Axe’s detailer with the scrubby recently released by Dove. So even if some men want to get away from the stereotype Axe portrays, they can’t really run too far other than just from the colour pallet.

Talk about a target market. Surely we’ve seen some crafty commercials from Axe in the past, but this one just blew me away.

Axe has shown it’s commitment to the young male sector through dozens of advertising campaigns, each one utilizing hotter and more scantly clad girls than the last. The ads are usually provocative and have undoubtedly had a strong effect on their sales, giving them a huge influence on the male body maintenance market. The ad campaigns with sexy girls are definitely effective, but the truth is they’re not much different than soft-core porn.

That is, until I saw the commercial for the Axe-Detailer. I was hysterical. It was just as provocative as the rest, but this time far wittier. The blatant double-entendre was, in my opinion, an incredibly clever trick and surely took the attention of every viewer, young and old–just as the product is intended to work for as claimed in the ad.

This commercial was surely one of the ballsiest (intended?) I’ve seen to date, and is a step in the right direction for the persistent Axe campaign, creating a huge advantage over competitors who definitely don’t endeavor in the same extremity as Axe. As I was in need of a loufa, of course I went out to buy the detailer and so far I’ve been quite content.

Young visionaries do not fret!
The business world that you’d hoped for isn’t doomed quite yet.
We’ve heard crashes and booms but we’ve seen nothing new,
Now the business world will be turning to you!

Take your ideas from high school and lemonade stands,
All the way to the bank with some brand new plans.
Forget meetings and ties and financial reports,
Use your Ipad and Fbook to Email and Xport.

There’s a time and place to look back and complain,
But with you guys on board there’s no need to explain.
Sure you’ll need education, skills, resumes and beyond,
But don’t you worry, UCanBCom.