One of the oldest adages in advertising is “know your audience.” Marketing a product properly to an audience can mean the difference between a successful product and an unsuccessful one. An excellent example of the differences in advertising can be seen when comparing products for two different markets which are made by the same company. Unilever, a large corporation that owns both the Dove and the Axe brand, is a prime example of the differences in the way that products are marketed based on the audience that they are targeted for.
The Dove website is targeted mainly towards women, and primarily women of the middle class and upper middle class. The Dove advertising team has used an appeal to ethos and pathos to reach its target audience. The Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, featured heavily on the splash pages for the company, is an appeal to the “real beauty” of every woman. The Dove marketing team made an attempt to use women who look different from the traditional model type to appeal emotionally and ethically to women. Because many women feel that the beauty industry is exploitative, the “Real Beauty” campaign was created as a way for advertisers to appeal to women who were tired of seeing heavily-retouched celebrities selling beauty products.
The campaign has been met with both relief and criticism from consumers. Some people say that Dove’s campaign is a movement in the right direction, away from the heavy photomanipulation that has become standard in advertising. Others point out that the women used in the ads are still retouched, and that the Dove campaign is merely a ploy to attract women to the product. Regardless, the appeal to ethos and logos was quite successful for the viral spread of the campaign-- although somewhat contentious, Dove did become known for the “Real Beauty” campaign and the surrounding advertisments.
Axe, on the other hand, is targeted mainly towards young men. In contrast to the Dove page, the Axe page is dark with intense splashes of color. Axe’s marketing strategy is to instill a sense of ferocity with their product; this is meant to appeal to their ideal customer base, which is young men. Where Dove uses women to sell their products to women, Axe uses women-- particularly heavily sexualized women-- to sell their product to men. Axe uses an appeal to pathos, or the emotion that many young men feel-- the desire to be seen as strong, fierce, and desirable by the opposite sex. By using heavy sexual imagery in their advertisements, the advertising team at Axe hopes to appeal to the desire to achieve all these things. Axe’s heavily sexualized marketing and intensely masculine color scheme is directly opposed to the type of marketing and color scheme that is used by the Dove brand.
Unilever owns both Dove and Axe, and yet the advertising departments at both of these brands have created two opposing advertising methodologies. Many people do not know that Axe and Dove are owned by the same corporation, but the fact that they are owned by the same corporation merely underscores the importance of understanding the intended market when considering an advertisement for a product. Understanding the market and the advertising strategy can ensure that the consumer is more savvy, and less likely to be convinced to buy unnecessary products by marketers.
Works cited
"Dove." Dove, 2013. Web. 18 Sep 2013. <http://www.dove.us/>.
"Axe." The Axe Effect, 2013. Web. 18 Sep 2013. <http://www.theaxeeffect.com/#/axe-campaigns/axe-black-chill>.
