« Once the functional benefits are met, the customer’s mind moves to other needs, which are intangible, emotional and often irrational. This has been highlighted in the brand value pyramid (Davis, 2000). » In order to achieve the highest level of loyalty, companies interact with consumers at a more emotional level and become a trustworthy partner.
Moreover,
« the easiest way of getting into someone's mind is to be first. It is
very easy to remember who is first, and much more difficult to remember who is
second. Even if the second entrant offers a better product, the first mover has
a large advantage that can make up for other shortcomings. » (RIES&TROUT, 1981).
Axe has its own way to
communicate through the different distribution channels. Axe invests a lot on
its campaigns, such as “Angels”, “The Chocolate Man”, “Axe Anarchy”. In 2013,
Unilever launched the new “Axe Apollo”: Axe is going to send consumers in the
space! http://www.unilever.fr/notre_entreprise/actualites_medias/AxeApollo/
Source :
http://www.youtube.com/user/AXE
Source :
https://www.facebook.com/Axe?ref=ts&fref=ts
Source :http://webzine.unitedfashionforpeace.com/ethical-beauty/rendez-vous-beaute/experience-cosmique-avec-les-gels-douche-axe-apollo/#.Upr6HY3vN60
Brand equity is a set
of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand name and symbols. And thus,
brand equity relates to the fact that different outcomes result in the
marketing of a product. Five categories composed brand equity to engender value
for customers: brand loyalty, name awareness, perceived quality, brand
associations and other proprietary brand assets such as patents or trademarks (Aaker, 1991).
The stronger the
consumers’ level of attachment to a brand, the more they are willing to invest
in behaviours. Brand attachment is driven by two concepts: Brand self-
connection, consumers select a brand according to their self-concept (Escalas
& Bettman, 2003); and prominence, the degree of pleasantness of
associations in memory (Park, MacInnis, Priester, Eisingerich & Iacobucci,
2010).
“Customer-based
brand equity occurs when the consumer is aware of the brand and holds some
favourable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory” (Keller, 1993).
According to Keller, in 2003, brand awareness is defined by brand recognition
and brand recall: consumers’ discrimination when having previous contact with
the brand opposed to consumers automatically identifies the brand from memory.
Source : Keller, Strategic Brand Management 14th Edition
Consumers are exposed to a
huge number of brands that impact their behaviour and their reactions to those
stimuli (Fitzsimons, Chartrand & Fitzsimons, 2008). Moreover, personality-related
attributes of a brand are strongly related to brand choice, loyalty and
purchase: a brand would be selected for its personal statement of personality
than for its physical attributes (Sirgy, 1982).
Compare with its
competitors, Axe has a higher price because it is a self-concept statement.
Thus, Axe has to communicate a lot on its concept in order that customers
have to keep in mind the Axe’s concept to make an extra financial effort:
creation of a unique and modern website, YouTube, Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Axe), television and radio
advertisements.
Axe has a higher price than
its competitors; maybe it is because it is not only a deodorant but also a body
spray that consumers could use as a perfume. Moreover, Axe is a brand with a
strong identify, even if it has the same product features as its competitors.
Brand image is a set of
associations that reflect consumers’ perception on a brand and need to be
favourable, strong and unique (Aaker, 1991) (Keller, 1993). Brand image and
associations strengths’ are connected to consumers’ experiences and exposures
to a brand’s communications (Aaker, 1991). Marketers must be coherent in their
associations to avoid a brand image that would lead to confusion and must
manage them to avoid possible weakness of future associations (Keller, 1993).
According to the other
articles posted in this blog, Axe’s main associations are young, cool, fun,
masculine, sexual confidence. Axe consumers’ understand that thanks to Axe, you
gain attention of women and thus you can create a relationship with them.
Axe’s mission is to
promise to its consumers that the brand will make them smell good, feel good
and look good to seduce women, by increase their self-esteem, self confidence
and sex appeal. Axe’s main target is between 14 and 25 years old, bachelor and
heterosexual. Axe point in out the fact that seducing girls obsess this target.
Implicitly, Axe targets young boy that have limited experience with women and
who need self-confidence and personality. Moreover, the packaging is modern,
with a cool design: black, red and blue colours suggest masculinity, power and
dominance. The target, which is supposed to concentrate young boy, geeks and
nerds, is going to become masculine, aggressive and self-confident men.
“A brand is a shared
desirable and exclusive idea embodied in products, services, places and/or
experiences. The more this idea is shared by a larger number of people, the
more power the brand has…” (Kapferer, 2012). In the previous article we have
talk about brand concept, products, offers, … but what is the customer’s
perception about Dove and Axe brand?
In order to create customer’s motivation and emotion, brands
need to generate a strong culture, a communication style and an emotional hook (Emotional
branding, 2011)
Axe imposes its point of view in a clever and motivating way
by being in contradiction with conventional publicity: Axe uses humour, setting
and protagonists relevant and aspirational for the target audience: loving
sports, music, sex, having a laugh and well-built men and attractive women.
The young target is impatient for their first experience
with women and the brand promises that thanks to Axe women are going to make
the first step.
Some of the people reject this idea of fantasy and the
emotional appeal, especially women: attractive women make the first move to
self-confident men.
SC
SOURCES:
Aaker, 1991, http://www.prophet.com/blog/aakeronbrands/156‐what‐is‐brand‐equity‐and‐why‐is‐it‐valuable
Al Ries and Jack,
Trout Positioning
RIES&TROUT.pdf, Positioning: The battle
for your mind
Emotional
branding, Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Prentice
Hall
Chetna Sharma, August
2011,
Miguel Raminhos Gonçalve Santos, Juillet
2013, Axe Bran Personality and Equity
Consumers’ perspective on the brand’s personality and equity, the universidade
Católica Portuguesa
