Axe is evolving its brand identity by addressing its long-standing association with “teenage excess” through a new platform: “The History of Overdoing It.” This campaign, which utilizes a humorous, academic-style narrator, acknowledges the “Axe cloud” phenomenon while introducing a redesigned spray system that offers lighter application and more control.
The shift reflects both technical product innovation and a response to changing consumer behavior. By turning the brand’s history into a punchline, the :15 “A History of Overdoing It” aims to entertain young men through a playful, escapist tone rather than a traditional lecture.
Here’s what iSpot’s Creative Assessment platform revealed on American males’ response to the spot.
The Details:
Among male viewers:
- Among American males, the :15 “A History of Overdoing It” was a top-decile performer (90th in overall response) in the personal care category, signaling that the creative formula worked at a macro level and warrants sustained media investment:
- The ad exhibited strong breakthrough ability, with Attention (+63 pts over 90-day personal care norms) and Likeability (+71 pts) easily surpassing the average personal care ad among male viewers.
- Top decile Watchability (92nd percentile) was fueled by the humorous creative execution, with the Funny emotion firing most strongly. Male viewers identified the characters (17% Single Best Thing vs 12% benchmark) and the visuals (19% vs 15% norm) as top reasons for the ad’s success, both contributing to a highly entertaining experience.
- Despite the character-driven humor, the product itself was still central, and unaided brand recall for Axe came in +19 pts over average, at 83%. Relevance landed +101 pts above-norm — the largest gap of any component and at the 90th percentile. This confirms the caveman/overconfidence humor archetype is culturally on-code with this audience. The word cloud reinforces this: ‘funny,’ ‘good,’ ‘body,’ ‘smell,’ and ‘axe’ dominate — the brand and product benefit was also received clearly.
- This :15 spot appealed to men of all ages (especially 21+) and persuaded 59% to increase consideration, outpacing norms by an impressive +14 pts.
- The ad exhibited strong breakthrough ability, with Attention (+63 pts over 90-day personal care norms) and Likeability (+71 pts) easily surpassing the average personal care ad among male viewers.
- However, second-by-second trace points to a vulnerability among the key M16-20 (among whom the ad placed slightly above-norm in the 65th percentile, but its lowest age contingent). These young males showed limited engagement despite the :15 length:
- Emotional profiling among male viewers revealed notable Inappropriate response as well as some signal for Irksome and Risqué, with signal for Exploit also measured (fairly even across age).
- Viewer sentiment from the male audience reveals a successfully entertaining ad that reinforced existing brand users, but also might risk putting off a small portion of viewers with potentially offensive stereotyping. For many men, the caveman concept resonated strongly as funny and unexpected and successfully broke through ad clutter. However, a few felt insulted (or thought some might be) by the caveman reference.
- Current Axe users responded very positively, reinforcing their brand choice.
- Emotional profiling among male viewers revealed notable Inappropriate response as well as some signal for Irksome and Risqué, with signal for Exploit also measured (fairly even across age).
Sample comments from male viewers on the “A History of Overdoing It” :15
“Axe is a great brand. I am a current user of their deodorant spray and I prefer the spray much more than the stick. Also, Axe offers a ton of scents to make men favorable to women.”
Male 36-49
“I use Axe spray, not the deodorant, but I do love the spray because of the smell and scent selection they have.”
Male 21-35
“I thought it was funny and I liked it. The fact that you were applying the deodorant spray to cavemen was a nice, but funny surprise. I don’t think you are making a remark about your customers, but I would recommend watching out for that. I’m curious if you have done anything new though? I haven’t seen an Ace body spray ad in a while, but this one, beyond being funny, didn’t seem all that special. What’s new? Why should I swap to Axe body spray?”
Male 16-20
“I really like how the product was described in the ad.”
Male 21-35
“That body spray sprays faster and lasts longer.”
Male 36-49
“I think it’s cool to use cavemen, but I don’t know how it makes me feel about buying Axe based on it?”
Male 16-20
“I thought it was a very creative and funny way to advertise Axe and their new scent.”
Male 21-35
“Axe doesn’t usually show comedy, but it’s nice to see them taking that approach.”
Male 21-35
“Clever and funny, but probably will get backlash depicting men and women in those roles. However, I found it hilarious and entertaining.”
Male 36-49
- “A History of Overdoing It” compared quite favorably within the male audience to multiple competitive deodorant ads, and exhibited a clear advantage over the humor attempted by Dr. Squatch:
- The spot also outpaced the recently released Old Spice update of their “Momsong” ad. The more balanced approach of the characters and visuals still keeping the product central helped the ad’s persuasion power significantly.
- “A History of Overdoing It” over-indexed dramatically vs norms and these competitive ads with 21–35-year-olds (+140 pts above norm) and 36–49-year-olds (+102 pts), but saw a much smaller delta among 16–20 males:
- The ‘caveman/history of overdoing it’ nostalgia framing may be landing more strongly as a self-aware millennial joke rather than connecting with true Gen Z sensibilities (younger males still showed overall positive (just weaker) response). All but one of the competitive ads fared more favorably than the brand’s new spot with M16-20.
- The Axe ad also turned off younger women 16-35 as well as older women 50+, suggesting male-dominant programming would be best favored.
- The ‘caveman/history of overdoing it’ nostalgia framing may be landing more strongly as a self-aware millennial joke rather than connecting with true Gen Z sensibilities (younger males still showed overall positive (just weaker) response). All but one of the competitive ads fared more favorably than the brand’s new spot with M16-20.
- The top three ads within personal care among male viewers over the past year all concerned oral hygiene/care. These :15 ads focused on education on something new (Change) to drive Relevance:
Ineffective creative, even if delivered to the right audience, results in missed opportunity and performance shortfalls. Great creative delivered poorly also results in failed campaigns.
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Creative Agency: LOLA MullenLowe