Men’s cosmetic brand AXE have launched a new twitter and Mixi (popular Japanese social networking site) based marketing campaign. Launched on May 9th, apparently “Confession Day”, men can enter the “AXE Tower” and confess their secrets of affection.
Users choose a particular follower and write a heart felt confession or admission of love. The subject of the confession then receives a tweet with a URL to click on. Once on the page an animated figure with the users avatar then grabs a can of AXE, sprays himself for confidence (and presumably to make himself irresistible!) and runs the gauntlet to AXE Tower, cheered on by avatars of other followers (we were amused to see the ever-present Serkan Toto pop up). The animated avatar then climbs up AXE Tower amid scenes of blossoming love, to the top where in true Japanese style shouts out the message to the object of his desires.
Unfortunately there is no voice which actually shouts the words out, the text appears above the character, but it is fun nonetheless. Other followers can also join in by tweeting messages of encouragement or in some cases possibly messages of consolation.
Attempting to extend the reach of a brand through social marketing campaigns are growing in popularity, and with Twitter becoming very widely used in Japan, done correctly this kind of campaign can be very affective. The problem with this particular campaign though, is that no one knew that May 9th was “Confession Day”. This means that it didn’t really capitalise on any existing event like it was designed to do, and so didn’t pick up as much chatter. If released around valentines day, for example, it could have been a lot more effective, although with the approach of sweaty summers AXE are obviously stepping up their marketing now. They were clever however, in sending out the automatic tweet containing the URL with the period infront of the @ symbol. This means that rather than being able to be read only by the those who follow both parties, it could be read by all of the followers.
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