Axeeffect: Feel on yourself
Client: Unilever
Brand: Axe
Goal: To develop a permanent communication platform for online branding. Line up the work to improve the brand, consolidating the image of deodorant as a liaison between the active boys and girls. To increase consumer loyalty.
Idea: With Axe you can easily meet any girl that you like!
Solution: Create a place online for cool guys, where they could entertain, «hang out», and meet the girls through their own activity, bypassing «commodity-money» relations. It should be tempter’s community, where the aim is not only a direct, offline communication, but the process - flirting.
Realization: In order to attract cool guys, they need to be able to attract the girls who are as cool as them! The strategy was built in two phases.
Part 1. Involve girls.
We started by attracting mass numbers of girls to the portal who could be real Axe-girls - those who permanently want to be at the center of male attention. Each girl has been registered only after pre-moderation and then enters into the community. We attracted girls with the help of viral mechanics from websites liveinternet.ru, vkontakte.ru and other popular portals.
Keep these girls back on the site - not an easy task. We need a permanent activity of the community’s kernell, i.e. the presence on the site no less than 2 times a week. For this purpose, were used various competitions, distribution of prizes, fun quizzes and horoscopes - everything that the girls need for an interesting and interactive relaxation.
Result: 10 000 registrations of girls in June 2008, of which not less than 1000 - the kernel of audience Axe-girls, which will help us to attract the male half.
Part 2. Catch the guys
Idea: Incite Search - an opportunity for «quality» acquaintance with different girls, avoiding any display of the monetization process. You do not have to pay, or send an SMS every five minutes . You can stand out by your own activity, attractiveness, behavior and charisma! By and by, you can easily get acquainted with the best girls, just because you are cool!
But to attract the guys - not the goal and not the end of the story, but its beginning. The final result is an independent life of the project with minimal actions from the outside. The strategy of launching self-activity is based on the constant saturation of the project with content and integrated program of involving users in the communication.
Realization: thematic articles, tests, photo albums and photo quizes, chat, virtual shop of fun knick-knacks that you can buy or give to the girl that you like, and much more.
«Axeeffect.ru is not intended to help users achieve love, sex, etc. Our goal is the process of dating. Every day the team is working on new entertainment for the audience and motivates users to be active and create their own content. Their work creates a place which is pleasant, full of choice «delicious», and comfortable and fun. We made it a fun and interesting process», - said Alexander Sevryukov, head of department of long-term projects, «GRAPE».
The growth of the audience is effected through blogs and seasonal promo-campaigns. In the blogosphere we used methodology of organization of special projects at sites popular among our targeted audience (LJ, li.ru, vkontakte.ru and others). Promo-campaigns aimed at promoting new products (eg, Axe Ideal Woman, Axe Neutron), held several times a year, and the audience, accumulated through them, also migrates to Axeffect.ru.
Half-yearly results of the project: on the website Axeffect.ru were registered more than 70 thousand people, of whom more than 22 thousand are girls. There are 500-800 registrations on the site per day. By December 2008, we plan to form a nucleus of more than 3000 brand evangelists, and the total number of users of the service must become no less than 100 000.
