Unilever?s Axe brand is positioning itself as a fixture in men?s grooming habits with a series of 15-second videos offering quick styling tips, borrowing a page from the playbook for beauty brands targeting millennial women.  

The male grooming brand is launching a video series on Instagram to promote its new Axe Advanced Collection, delivering answers to questions regarding primping for men, including tips, tricks and tutorials. The content is geared towards encouraging men to focus on what makes them unique and to disregard strict masculinity rules of the past.  

Axe will be sharing a sequence of the 15-second videos on Instagram, which act as an online grooming tutorial series with advice on how men can create their own individual look. The videos will answer common questions that men are seeking answers to online regarding fashion and grooming. 


Axe's new video ad celebrates uniqueness

With each decade comes new fashion and grooming trends, and the popular trend in modern day fashion is to be yourself and express your own unique style. Axe?s ?Instagroom? series is coinciding with this trend, as traditional ideas of what is masculine have fallen by the wayside. 

The men?s product brand is also launching an online contest, accessible through mobile and desktop in which users enter to be mentioned by musician John Legend and to be featured at SXSW or the Toronto International Film Festival. Aspiring filmmakers and music artists enter on the online platform submitting their work for the chance to win.  


John Legend is Axe's latest brand ambassador 

A multiplatform video will be featured as a TV spot, on YouTube and other social media platforms. The vignette celebrates everyone?s individuality through physical and emotional aspects that set him apart such as a big nose, a love of heels, dance moves or a interesting suit rather than a stereotypical six pack that every man thinks he needs. 

Axe mobile strategy 

The brand also leveraged an in-store partnership with Walmart designed to attract the brand's young male audience with relevant music downloads on mobile as a reward for purchasing products (see more). 

Axe is moving away from titillation as a marketing strategy and its efforts to embrace mobile to win over a new generation of young consumers will need a clear identity to be successful (see more). 

"Male archetypes have dominated pop-culture and immersed guys in stereotypes for years and as a result, created a lot of pressure to fit certain definitions," Mr. McCarthy said. "But today, guys can be what they want, dress how they want, love who they want and live a little more freely.

"So with this campaign, AXE wants to inspire guys to express what makes them individual in an authentic way," he said.