Newly launched Axe skin care range gets Tumblr facescore page

By Simon Pitman

- Last updated on GMT

Axe Facescore
Axe Facescore
Unilever is giving its Axe skin care range a boost by heavily promoting it through social media, including a ‘facescore’ page on Tumblr designed to assess the level of an individual's facial grooming based on uploaded personal photos.

Axe is marketed at a teenage and young adult market and has traditionally relied on sex appeal to promote the brand, which started off as a male deodorant, and has subsequently expanded into the female deodorant category and now the skin care category on the back of significant success.

The recently launched Axe FaceScore page​, taps into the successful emphasis on sex appeal by asking individuals to upload a photo of themselves in order to have it rated by other users.

On the back of the rating the individual user is given an appraisal that determines how good - or bad - their grooming is judged to be, with messages such as ‘sharpen up your smoothness’ if it is determined that the image does not make the grade.

To judge and to be judged...

Likewise, users are also given a choice of two photos per page, they then pick the photo they prefer, before proceeding to rate it accordingly, on a scale between one and five.

Unilever is using the scoring as an example of how an ‘ultra smooth’ , category five face, can get the 'right' sort of attention, compared to a category one face, which, according to the marketers, will simply 'whisper' instead of making any significant impact.

The idea behind the concept is to encourage individuals to take better care of their skin in order to give a better impression when they post their photos to the fickle social media world.

Will it go viral?

So far the page has only got 20 re-tweets and 382 likes linked to the associated Facebook page, but Unilever marketers are hoping that it will eventually go viral as the database of photos continues to grow.

Launched in February, the Axe Face range targets young men with a range of seven products that are priced between $4 and $9, in keeping with the lower spend on personal care products in this category.

The range includes a Chilled Variant, that acts a skin balm and soother lotion, a Boost Variant, that contains micro-beads aimed at deep cleansing the skin, and a Hydrator, which acts as a 2-in-1 post-shave moisturizer.  

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