Brand Refresh
Axe
Industry
Retail/E-Commerce
Deliverables
Branding, UX/UI, Web Design, Email Design
Credits
Leanna Jones, Bradford Prairie, Sean Bacon
Objective
Axe is a men’s personal care and grooming brand with their selling point focused primarily on physical attraction and sex appeal. The brand received a lot of negative attention during the early 2000’s for their suggestive commericals and ads which commonly overly sexualized women, causing the brand to suffer. Since then, the brand has tried to repair their image but has yet to do so successfully, for this reason a brand refresh was proposed.
Approach
The challenge was in creating a new brand identity without losing the brand equity.
This meant pivoting away from their current marketing strategy & shifting it more towards one that had a more positive message while also maintaining the brand equity they have.
The goal was to create an identity that was more relatable to their consumers, and one that was not only motivated by their interests, behaviors and influences, but inspired by it.
Brand Audit
While conducting an audit of the brand and their packaging, the main findings was that the brand was lacking consistentcy throughout the design and branding as well as hierarchy with information. Many of their products have varying design stryles with different logo applications & have an overwhelming amount of information, potentially making it difficult for consumers to distinguish the different types of products.
With this in mind, the goal was to create a cohesive design system that reflected the brand's new identity and voice, would appeal to the target market, and be able to stand out amongst the many other brands in the market and on the shelves.
Packaging
Because Axe's previous packaging was a bit overwhelming in terms of design & information, the main focus was to simplify & unify the designs across all products. Since the brand carries various products, the design needed to be able to work across all of the packaging components and have clear information hierarchy.
The new design maintains Axe's brand equity through the black packaging & bold white logo, but is revamped with a much more clean, cohesive and refined look and feel. The old graphic elements have been replaced by the gradient of stripes which were inspired from retro car stripes, and help to distinguish the different scents while also creating a consistent and recognizeable element for the consumer further adding to the current brand equity.
