Introduction
Marketing strategies and advertisements have penetrated a whole new, more personal level of reaching out to its target customers using the so-called, ever reinventing ‘new media,’ which is from an ordinary information website to multi-media to streaming interactive, personalized media. This allows online end surfers and users, who are basically consumers, to experience, manipulate and personalize their own preference in interacting and using website features embedded and downloaded on their own personal computers.
While the rest of powerful manufacturers and establishments’ marketing strategies continue revolutionizing techniques to cover a wider as well as establish loyalty and constant connection with their consumers, others have limited their interaction in their website while it is open and being viewed.
This paper shall try to develop a theoretical framework and analyze a text — in this case, the AXE Canada website, which I believe used both pathos or emotional appeals and ethos or credibility appeals.
Discussion
The site:
First of all, I would like to describe the Axe-Canada website. Upon reaching its homepage, one is greeted with the popular television commercial videos for Axe deocologne: series of cryptic if not mysterious cases about women turning physical but not necessarily violent as the grave ads would want them to appear. The home page has its Main Menu under which have the labels or main links as
- Vice – this page contains the videos of cases AXN mystery tele-series fashion done in an investigative manner. Another is a supposedly undercover video about the source of the mystery fruit scent that covers a fruit farm/factory and laboratory where the scent is concocted located somewhere in Europe.
- Applications – has under it two options for the user: “Axe Central,” which it claims to be a “desktop supercharger that delivers fresh and provocative wallpaper imagery on a near-daily basis, giving inside access to everything ax by providing stimulating updates right on your desktop.” It is a downloadable program with wallpaper young women models in varying degrees of dressed and undressed. There is also the “Axe Generator,” another downloadable video-game-simulating program that visually represents an outdated machine with four featured buttons. The first button, “Pet Names,” asks the user for a female’s name, hair color, and best asset, then requires its user to generate pet names that resemble “biker chick” aliases as long as four to eight words. These names may be forwarded as email messages to the targeted female. The second button is “Pick-up Lines,” with four categories being picked, which include Cougar, Friends Hot Mom, Friends Freshly Ex’d Girlfriend and Complete Stranger. One sample for a Friend’s friendly —– which I would like to proofread as Freshly — Ex’d Girlfriend, a line goes “It’s true two wrongs don’t make a right, but who cares about emotion math?” A line for a complete stranger goes, “Do you know how much a polar bear weighs? Enough to break the ice. Hi, my name’s _____.” Or “Damn girl, you have more curves than a race track.” For a Mom: Trust me, you’ve never had a mother’s day gift like this before.” And for a Cougar: “I knew I was on safari, but I never thought I’d find a trophy wild cat like you.” The third button is “She to He Dictionary” or “What does it mean when she says: “It must be nice to have a relaxed dress code at the office.” This original line is translated ax fashion as: “Does that mean you have to go to work dressed like a slob?” Another interesting one for females is the line “It’s fun watching Monday night football with you.” Which ax suggests meant: “Why don’t dentists schedule root canal surgery on Monday nights?” The fourth button is “Break-up Lines,” of which the user have to provide a name, reason for the break-up: It’s just time to move on; She’s the move from lowriders to sweats; Too much of her pink scented crap in my bathroom; The spark is long gone; I’m already dating someone else; I want to see other people; She wants me to meet her parents; with a “Send Break-up line” feature allowing the “dressed-up” message sent to an email address the user provides.
- M.I.N.D.I. – Multi-interface New Dimensional Intelligence is another downloadable program that helps personalize the user’s desktop with games and other features.
- Products – This is the page where ax products are listed and shown
- Axe vault is the historical narration of ax products, and then there is also the home page “Warning: use Axe Responsibly.”
I suggest that the Axe website used both pathos or emotional appeals and ethos or credibility appeals [Unit 2, week 4, pp. 4-5] as can be connected with the “investigative crime-like” full-length videos done in AXN crime scene series fashion. While pathos or emotional appeals would make the “crime scene” video appeal to young men, meaning there is the understanding that other men would be viewing it, it would attract men between the ages 15 to 35 to view it, too.
Likewise, by using detectives or crime agents as protagonists in the video, make use of ethos or credibility appeals, one that has been “investigated thoroughly” is the message sent across. As Wolkomir and Wolkomir wrote, “…advertising’s job is not just urging… [but] to make you believe…” as they quoted James Twitchell [Marketing and the American Consumer, p. 660].
The use of the machine simulators that instantly arm the users with skills such as the use of smart pick-up lines, tempting names for their target females, and instantly connect them to their target females add up character and convenience as well as practicality and usefulness as Twitchell actually implored when he wrote that, “What we see in the marketplace is the result of the manipulation of the many for the profit of the few. [p. 654, Marketing and the American Consumer] “Consumers are led around by the nose,” [p. 654]. Although these are not actually morally acceptable attitudes, these are popular and generally embraced by the target audience who are easily swayed to what is new and popular [Wolkomir and Wolkomir, p 660].
Many studies have pointed out that males between the targeted age bracket of Axe of which I believe ranges from 15-35 years old are basically new technology users adept and prone to play computer video games or machine savvy, from latest car or bike models to collector items. Visually, these were maximized in use in the website coupled with the “cool” machine features of hallucinatory wallpaper, “that delivers fresh and provocative wallpaper imagery on a near daily basis…” [Axe website].
I would like to agree, however to the proposition of Twitchell that, “In cultural studies today, everything is oppression and we are all victims…Needless to say, in such a system the only safe place to be is tenured, underpaid, self-defined as marginalized, teaching two days a week for nine months a year and writing really perceptive social criticism that your colleagues can pretend to read. Or rather, you would be writing such articles if only you could find the time” [ p. 654].
Conclusion
I would like to conclude that the Axe website maximised an inter-lapping role of pathos or emotional as well as ethos or credibility appeals. These messages that connects with the user who are the target market of axe, used implied and explicit texts to get across as acceptable and useful to their audience-consumer promoting the use of the product subliminally by connecting the scent’s effect on how consumers may appeal to their target mate females: irresistible.
References
Twitchell, James. “In Praise of Consumerism.” Marketing and the American Consumer. p. 652
Wolkomir, Richard and Wolkomir, Joyce. “You Are What You Buy.” Marketing and the American Consumer. p. 659