Axe/Lynx Brand DNA

Axe deodorant - known as Lynx in the UK - has huge brand awareness amongst consumers, thanks to a long-running and impactful advertising campaign. But what makes it so successful? What do consumers really think of the brand? And how can its attributes be consistently delivered through product design and retail packaging? Seymourpowell's powerful Brand DNA tool revealed the answers.

Challenge
An ability to deconstruct and analyse consumer perceptions of products and services allows brand owners to manipulate the key ingredients in their ongoing design language. To offer clients this service, Seymourpowell's Foresight team set up the hugely successful Brand DNA analytical tool, which strips a brand to its absolute essentials, using detailed ethnographic and product research to reveal what the product really means to consumers, at the same time building up the visual language needed to take that brand promise forward through strategic product innovation.

Personal care brand Axe needed to identify how its existing emotional qualities - humour, sexual attraction and a play on male insecurity - could be reflected in the ongoing design of the product packaging itself.

Response
Working with the Brand DNA tool it became clear there was a duality to the Axe persona: on the one side there is the confident sexual predator, on the other side an ugly/spotty/geeky male hoping to get the girl. Advertising campaigns had set up this tension, but the product itself should reflect the same personality, being confident and mature whilst delivering a feeling of fun and knowing playfulness.

Result
The Neutron can was the result of this product research and design language. Its twist cap takes cues from zoom camera lenses and similar boy-friendly gadgets, encouraging playful, tactile engagement with the product. T3 magazine described it as 'a bottle that looks a bit like a grenade. What girl could resist a man smelling of booze, carrying something that looks like a dangerous weapon? (Whiffy) genius.'

The Neutron also scooped a silver medal at the 2007 Starpack Awards, where judges praised its 'technically-innovative pack [offering] excellent shelf impact and consumer convenience.'

More importantly, Seymourpowell's Brand DNA tool has put Axe/Lynx's fundamental brand attributes under the microscope, translating them into a design language which can be employed by the client again and again.

The client says...
"Seymourpowell's Brand DNA has really helped us translate our brand strategy into a visual language which inspires our design partners. We find our design partners come alive when we let them loose on the DNA tool, in a way conventional words-on-paper briefs, no matter how good, can never do. We've found the tool an inspirational addition to our brand's strategic armoury." - Steven Miles, ex-Axe