Insight
Despite the fact that Axe Hair has been around for five years, very few guys (age 18-24) realise that one of their favorite deodorant and shower gel brands also offers a line of hair care and styling products. Axe Hair continues to need to build awareness, credibility and a “coolness factor,” particularly in the Styling category, which presents a huge growth opportunity for the male segment.
In 2013, Axe Hair came out with a range of products to do just that, focused on desired “end looks” (ex: messy look, clean cut, spiked up), in three easy steps. The problem? Now Axe Hair needed to communicate the benefits and ease of styling with Axe products to our target, young guys (18-24) who are typically unmotivated by traditional media. An even bigger problem: Mindshare found that 80% of young guys (18-24) do not currently use styling products (Simmons 2013)!
Therefore, in addition to driving awareness and brand perception, Axe had to find a way to educate these “non-stylers” and bring them into the category. Rooted in the campaign idea “Beauty Takes Time, Handsome Doesn’t,” Axe created a unique and entertaining campaign to reach our core guy, and assure him that having great looking hair doesn’t have to be hard or take a lot of time.
Strategy
Mindshare knows that the Axe guy can’t get enough of snackable videos clips and is “always on” in the social sphere – habitually uploading, liking, and sharing funny content with his vast social network. It also knew that the majority of this content is consumed on YouTube. According to Nielsen, YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network. When it comes to grooming content, he looks to friends and “guys like him” for grooming tips; however, he tends to be aloof when it comes to pursuing this type of content on his own.
So, how do you serve up hair styling content to someone who’s not proactively seeking it out? You create something funny. And make it super engaging. Poking fun at the volume and ridiculousness of most women’s hair tutorials, the brand decided to create its own tutorial.
The resulting video was a humorous juxtaposition of how long it takes the average female to style her hair vs. how the average guy can be styled in just seconds. And so a series of custom content, Axe Hair: Styled in Seconds (SIS), was created, featuring popular YouTube “funny guys” Rhett & Link. Given the partnership with Rhett & Link and what they know about our guys’ behaviours online, Mindshare identified the YouTube as the perfect place for this content to live. As such, Axe Hair would seamlessly be integrated into this space where its content could easily be found, consumed, and shared by its guys.
Execution
Utilising YouTube as the primary platform, Axe created a custom video that put a 7-minute female hair tutorial side by side with Axe’s SIS content. Sure enough, Rhett was sporting his awesome new hair style before she even touched the hair brush. In addition to the custom video, Rhett & Link, demonstrated other creative ways to style their hair in seconds through 10 in-show integrations in their established YouTube web series, Good Mythical Morning.
Within the integrations, the hilarious duo designed a contest in which Rhett would style his hair with Axe products and Link would race him doing a silly task (I.e. make a dog yawn) to see which could be completed first. The loser after 10 competitions had to wax his chest. Fans were encouraged to participate by selecting challenges. Needless to say, Rhett won.
The content was seeded through paid media, social, and PR. A :30 version of the long-form video was developed for paid media, with an emphasis on driving video views in highly targeted, yet scalable environments. The key was being associated with funny content while making it feel organic. As notorious YouTube stars, Rhett & Link have a strong social following among males 18-24. Axe was able to capitalise on this, through promoted tweets, shares, and mentions. Although YouTube sensations, they come off as extremely relatable and approachable, and therefore resonated with “our guy.”
Results
The Q4 Axe Hair “Styled in Seconds” campaign surpassed all set benchmarks, driving engagement and sales. By tactfully integrating the Axe hair message into the target’s natural environments (i.e. YouTube, funny contextual video sites, Facebook) the Axe Hair prospect was even more captivated and engaged with this content than in past campaigns. The custom video was not only highly entertaining, but also effectively communicated the brand’s proposition.
Awareness & Engagement Successes:
• Video views exceeded 30.6 million, nearly 178% over goal
• 1.2 million+ video views generated by the Rhett & Link video integrations
• 4.4 million total impressions on Twitter (engagement rate of 2.77%)
Driving Sales:
• Axe Hair styling $ sales YoY was up 39% during the quarter the campaign was in market (and even up 67% in the last 4 weeks of the campaign!), which resulted in Axe Hair Styling for FY being up + ~17%.
By leveraging a platform that caters to the target audience and delivering content in a way they are receptive to, the program was a huge success. These learnings and successes have helped to shape Axe's ongoing strategy.