AXE Cybersport Initiative Russia
Task
The objective was to grow market share. Axe follows its audience and supports it in all beginnings encouraging getting more. We dared to be the first personal care brand to come into cyber sport in Russia. The challenge was to play in the way sophisticated audience will love and appreciate. We needed to establish Brand as a long-player on this territory and involve new audience into the sport so we can grow together.
Ideas and solutions
In 2017 Axe launched new platform: Find You Magic. The main RTB was that everyone has its own peculiarity and with AXE you can dare to appreciate it. Communication was directed to young men who are still searching for their uniqueness. Many of them are hiding in the world of games. As the result cybersport is most growing trend nowadays. We needed to catch the most engaging and sophisticated audience – gamers, and involve them into deep communication with the brand. The executions had to be maximum relevant and friendly to the audience. We developed three stage of winning the audience: Stage one: curry favor with team. Sponsorship of one of the best Russian cybersport teams. Massive integration from branded uniform to special content in their vlogs. Engaging mechanics for fans and of course product presence in all the media where team appeared. Stage two: ensure the mass affection. Sponsorship of translation of main global tournament so every cyber fan can see us. Fully branded translations with direct ad placement. Highly native approach to integration, so user not just noticed but loved AXE as the sponsor. Stage three: introduce cybersport for the wide audience Project with portals of two main men’s TV channels where we described the world of gaming and involve new audience to become a part of cybersport environment with the AXE … so everyone could find their own magic. Axe has become the real love mark for the audience. Fans even asked to repeat the advertising! Users watched the branded content for 6 mln hours! More than 300 000 actions were made with the branded content. Fans generated more than 1500 pieces of content so called “mems” with the main character of our advertisement. Brand metrics showed huge improvements, so we can truly say that Axe established itself as a fair player on cybersport territory. Overall Likeability +7% Buzz +16% Advocacy +12% Brand kept the leadership in men deodorants segment growing market share by 15%.
