You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

A while back, I did an Ad Space on a series of commercials for Axe Body Spray. These ads had a very simple pitch: wear our product, and women will want to have sex with you. To get that message across, the ads basically turned Axe into a magical lust potion – guys spray a little of it on, and suddenly every woman in smelling distance becomes a sex crazed beast desperate to jump their bones. They called this “The Axe Effect”.

Do I even need to tell you these ads were from the 2000’s? While sex has always been part of advertising, the first decade of the 21st Century had a particular fondness for being edgy, crass, and shocking for its own sake, especially when it came to making dudes horny. Those Axe ads were very much part of that decade’s zeitgeist, and obviously aren’t something they’re doing now.

But they haven’t entirely given up on the Axe Effect idea, either. Recently, they put out another series of commercials that play with the idea that wearing some Axe equals guaranteed entry into a girl’s pants … but before any getting it on can be gotten on to, there’s someone else who’d like to weigh in:

I’ll admit, it took me a couple watches to realize what these new ads were going for: since wearing Axe makes women want you, obviously anyone the woman previously showed affection to is gonna see you as a rival and want you out of the way. It’s just, making the jealous lover a dog, a baby, or stuffed bear … it’s just bizarre and disconnected enough, the message doesn’t click right away (at least, not for me) making the ads seem simply surreal.

Still, it makes for memorable ads, and that’s 90% of the battle won right there.