Lowe

Lowe Sydney for Rexona; the last line says "Rexona, for men who take risks." I first saw this ad in English on Lowe's website but was unable to embed the English version.:(

Rexona is a Unilever product; it is a brand of deodorant that makes both male and female products. Apparently, they have the world's largest deodorant sales and market share and claim to have "the number one position in half the world." As a part of the Unilever family, Rexona is a close cousin to other hygiene brands like Axe, Dove, Pond's, and Vaseline. The controversy surrounding Axe and Dove, and the fact that Unilever owns them both while the brands promote very opposing messages and images, leaves Rexona caught somewhere in the middle. Rexona certainly doesn't have the same blatant sexuality in its advertising message or brand identity as Axe, but it does promote the same daring, hyper-masculine tone. It's odd that a product category that is so utilitarian often uses the most evocative and galvanized imagery to beef it up. Deodorant advertising takes a product most adolescents used to be embarrassed about buying or using, and brings it to the forefront of the ad with hyperbolic visuals, narratives, or teenage boy humor. The Rexona ad shown above doesn't humiliate mankind by perpetuating gender roles and stereotypes to the extreme that Axe does, but the hyper-masculinity that is the theme of the spot does perpetuate one gender role for boys, in that it suggests that all boys/men want to live risky lifestyles. The men shown in the ad take the kind of risks superheros or video game characters might take, but some risks can lead to things like babies or herpes. Deodorant is just supposed to keep you from sweating, the hype is just out of control these days. I understand that the more bland the product, the more unique the advertising needs to be, but when every brand seems to be trying to one-up everything that's come before it, things get ridiculous.