By Sam McManis
McClatchy Newspapers

MCT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - So, as they're making their way through a Sacramento-area Target, the young women pass the deodorant aisle and see a display for Axe body spray – that scent of choice for advertising-susceptible guys, ages 18 to 24.

And suddenly, Oneika Richardson and her friends are overcome by a need to dance provocatively and to intone that cheesy '70s porn-movie guitar riff – Bom Chicka Wah Wah – featured in the Axe TV commercials.

Then, they dissolve into laughter and eye-rolling.

No, these women – students at Sac State – haven't been overcome by the manly Axe aroma. Nor are they making a feminist statement denouncing what many say are sexist and degrading images.

"I just find the ads cute and cheeky, honestly," says Richardson, who co-hosts a podcast on sex and relationships for the school newspaper's Web site.

Yet, Richardson recognizes what critics and consumer watchdogs are calling the gender exploitation inherent in Axe's series of commercials and Internet ads, with its slogan "Nice girls turn naughty."

Richardson is, after all, a women's studies minor.

THEN AGAIN ...

"The first time I saw them, I immediately laughed," she admits, almost sheepishly.

That's the thing about this advertising campaign: The ads can offend and entertain in equal measure.

But in the past three years, they've also been seen as proof by many that American advertising has pushed the envelope to the breaking point.

Just last month, the consumer watchdog group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood began a letter-writing push to Axe's parent company, Unilever, accusing it of sexism and hypocrisy.

The former charge, of course, is easy to grasp, as the ads show women as little more than pheromone freaks.

The hypocrisy charge comes because Unilever is also the parent company of Dove, whose latest ad in its "Campaign for Real Beauty" upbraids sexploitation in advertising and tells parents to "Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does."

UNILEVER CATCHES IRE

Susan Linn, director of the consumer group and a professor at Harvard Medical School, says the letter-writing effort has spawned more than 2,000 e-mails to Unilever executives.

"Unilever needs to have a consistent policy on how it treats women," Linn says by phone from Cambridge, Mass.

"Either treat them the Dove way or the Axe way. Unilever has dismissed it as just a joke. But, in fact, advertising images have a powerful effect, even if people don't realize it. Especially if they don't realize it."

In response to e-mailed questions, a statement from the company says that the ads are developed for comedic value and are "not meant to be taken literally."

"The lighthearted humor behind our ads appeals to the guys who use Axe – and, in many cases, to the women in their lives, as well," the statement says. "We regularly test elements of our Axe campaign with young women, who share with us that they see these ads as clever. They get the joke."

In any case, this much is certain: The commercials are helping sell tons of pungent deodorant. According to industry publication Brand Week, Axe had $71 million in sales in 2006 – $50 million more than its nearest rival, Tag.

And consumers are definitely aware of the product.

"I teach one media class of 140 (students)," says California State University, Sacramento instructor Timi Ross Poeppelman. "And every single one of them knows these ads, whether they like them or not. On that level, the ads work, regardless of what we think of them."

That said, there is a long history in advertising of using sex to sell products. (See chart on Page E1.) Hai Karate cologne spots in the 1960s were a tamer precursor to the Axe commercials. And, more recently, the Miller Lite ad featuring scantily clad women wrestling in a pond over whether the beer's best feature was its "great taste" or whether it was "less filling" ushered in a new era of explicitness.

AXE CHANGES FOCUS

But Axe has been in the crosshairs of critics who see a rapid increase in sex and sexism in advertising.

Sexism charges aside, Axe's approach is widely perceived as a marketing success, says Bruce Vanden Burgh, a Michigan State University professor who specializes in advertising.

"The kids I teach are the target market for this product, and I think (Axe) has got them, dead on," Vanden Burgh says. "This is a very edgy generation when it comes to sex – very out there. It's different than previous generations, where there was more upfront feminism. So, the ads mirror their attitudes."

If that's true, then ours is a culture verging on hedonism and an increasing objectification of women.

Consider: One of the first – and most-viewed Axe ads (according to YouTube downloads) – features bikini-clad women, hundreds of them, racing over hill and dale, swimming treacherous waters and elbowing each other with feral grimaces to converge on a guy spraying Axe on his torso on the beach.

Another features an Axe-wearing man and a woman kissing on a cliff. They roll down the hill, still in an embrace, over a picnic table, through a greasy auto shop and then through a tomato patch (where a sexy female crop-picker joins the couple) until they land in an ocean of Axe. The kicker: "How Dirty Boys Get Clean."

Lately, Axe has changed its focus from 30-second TV spots to long-form and "embedded" advertising in the MTV show "The Gamekillers."

To pitch its "Vice" deodorant product, for instance, Axe three months ago shot a six-minute mock news documentary called "Scared Sweet," in which women under the influence of Axe are "rehabilitated" in prison. Considerable sexual innuendo ensues, of course.

And the brand's latest viral Web site is a consumer-generated "World's Dirtiest Film" contest. College-age filmmakers are urged to digitally capture girls "getting dirty" – example: bikini-clad women rolling and fighting in chocolate – to win prizes.

GUYS' VIEWS MIXED, TOO

But when it comes to fostering cross-gender understanding, Poeppelman doesn't think much of the Axe campaign.

"They are degrading to both sexes," she says. "It's interesting how accepting we are of a female being objectified as a sex object. If you reversed that and had men acting like the (Axe) women do, people would say it's horrible."

Certainly, in a recent letter to the University of California, Davis' paper, the Aggie, student Annie Pierpoint wrote in reaction to Axe's marketing on campus: "While spraying Axe everywhere may get you girls in fantasyland, let me give advice to the real men living in the real world: Be classy, respectful, attentive and honest, and you soon will find yourself surrounded by real women."

So, what do young men think of the ads?

"I agree with the protests," says Mikhail Chernyavsky, who writes a sex column for the Hornet, Sac State's newspaper. "It's presenting sexuality in only an animalistic view. And any educated individual is smart enough to know this is just a marketing ploy."

AND YET ...

"Every (college) guy, if they put effort into how they look in the morning, will have Axe be another product in their basket of hair shampoos, conditioners and gel," he acknowledges.

But, as Michigan State's Vanden Burgh asks, "Just because the ads work, is it ethical and moral?

"When I first came here (to teach) in the '70s, everyone was concerned about the social effects of advertising. Ask the same question to students now, and the response is, 'If it works, use it.' But you have to ask yourself, 'How far can they take this?'"

Indeed, industry experts concede that U.S. advertising has gotten considerably racier in recent years – though it still lags behind Europe, where nudity in ads is widely tolerated and not necessarily salacious.

But how far can the envelope be pushed before it explodes?

"That's a good question," Poeppelman says. "In the '50s, we didn't want to see Elvis' hips on TV. And now we've got Axe. It's like a train wreck, watching these commercials. On the one hand, they're well done and you can't take your eyes off of them. On the other hand, you're thinking, 'This is disgusting.'"

© 2007, The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.).