How did Unilever (Axe Brand) conduct research with males to design their marketing

campaigns? What did they design to reach the six types of psychological profiles of

potential Axe users?

The brand did an online survey in which they asked 12.000 males from 15 to 50 y/o all

around the world. They were asked personal and embarrassing question, mostly

directly related to girls and sex. They found out the sexual fantasy of the subjects and

created a campaign towards their desire: to be desired by many women.

Then they accompanied 100 of them to a bar to secretly see how they pick-up girls in

order to segmentate. As a result they got 6 psychological profiles of the male animal.

After that they decided which ones of them were their target audience. It turned out

to be the novices as the brand could persuade them that Axe would help them to have

more success easier.

As a result they created a bunch of 30-sencond TV ads in which there always were a lot

of women half naked who desire badly the guy who is wearing Axe.

Do Homoerotic ads work for women? Do they work for men? Why?

They do work for men even though they do not like to admit it. “Men rationalize

ogling these ads by telling themselves they are just looking to a isolated part”. It was

discovered that when men are shown provocative photos of other men, the part of the

brain that lies was lighten up, which meant they were attracted but they were trying to

convince themselves they were not. They are not trying to impress women, they try to

impress men.
Women usually want to be the main character of a man´s fantasy, hence why usually

the message of these homoerotic ads is that they can be as desired by men as the

models in the ad. So when he ad shows a bunch of models, it is for females to know it

is a male fantasy and make them want to be desired by men.

Can perfume free female sexual inhibitions? How did Calvin Klein test their perfume

Euphoria to find out if it triggered sexual lust in women?

Yes it can. Calvin Klein sent the manufacturer a series of sexually themed videos to

show what kind of feeling they wanted to evoke. After that they run a focus group

meeting to see if what they thought of the perfume was the same as the bran

intended. Stories were romantic, sexual and passionate.

They carried out another research around the question “Where does it take you

emotionally?” But before that, they had to know the dark places women would think

about. SO they led women through a maze of corridors into dark rooms (each one with

a different variation of the perfume). In each room they had to say what where they

feeling and thinking. Then they were shown the same series of videos that they had

sent to the perfume manufactures to see what they were being evoked.

Then they hired Scent Analysis to conduct a sophisticated test to find out which

fragrance was paired to every note that the women described.

Later they hired a semiotician to help them come up with a word that would capture

the scent and feelings of the perfume. Finalizing the process of the creation of

Euphoria perfume.