Axe

In an ad for axe, there are two images split in the middle one girl and one guy on opposite sides. The guy is showering with axe while the girl has whip cream wrapped around her. Although the men and women are in the same position, the same dark room, and the same style of foam/cream; The focus of this add is the people although the product appears on the bottom center is not the main focus it is the second thing you see. The ad expresses to the viewer the “cause and effect of the product”, the slogan written across the bottom of the ad is “the cleaner you are the dirtier you get.” They use the dark colors to form a mysterious sense of the correlation between pictures.

Although it’s advertising a shower gel for men it uses women to get the males to guy the product. By doing that it dehumanizes the women and just makes her the side effect of using this product. Although, it is not directly saying that axe makes you get women, its implying that women will come to you if you use axe. Also it is a common fact that if you smell good people will like to be around you, and by using that common knowledge it is persuading you to use axe. They’re selling this product by sexualizing the effects of good hygiene in their ads, as opposed to many female body soaps where they offer soft skin and healthy, axe offers sex to its customers.

But this is common in ads intended for males they often advertise by sexualizing its ads. It shows a male model the standard for good looking guys and it shows a good looking female as well, if the female wasn’t good looking the ad wouldn’t sell because its not what the consumer wants, this has happened before to other companies like Wendy’s. Skinny, healthy people on ads sell, if the models were over weight or slightly cubby the ads don’t sell as well, because they don’t fit the ideal women or man of that generation. Many men associate smelling good to getting women so axe simply assist that knowledge that by using axe you smell good and get more women.
Not only is it sexualizing and degrading women but axe's parent company is Dove. Dove claims to be "women positive", but how can we believe them if they make ads for Axe which degrade women, where they make women an object but in Regular dove ads they claim every women is beautiful regardless and in these Axe ads they have flawless most likely photoshopped women to persuade men into buying there product. In dove ads they say we're all beautiful to persuade women to buy their products.
Regardless of what their selling they use there audience say what their audience wants to hear to get them to buy their product. They're just another company who wants to make a profit wether or not it changes the social ideology or not. Dove and Axe have completely opposite messages to the opposite sex, but regardless of the message they want consumers, not many people realize the correlation between the two companies but once they do you start to question if they're actually supporting women or using them or supporting the men or just lying to them.