Axe/Lynx Brand DNA 2005

Embodying the essence of a brand
Seymourpowell's Foresight team uses an extraordinarily successful analytical tool called 'Brand DNA'. This tool enables brand owners to see their brand stripped down to its absolute essentials – what the delivered product really means to consumers – whilst building up the visual language needed to take that brand forward in product form. When we undertook this process for the Axe brand, the first thing we discovered about Axe (or Lynx as it's called in the UK), was that this was an extraordinary brand that did not seem to require a single shred of proof of efficacy whatsoever. The highly-impactful image created by BBH in its brand advertising told you this product was your buddy in the mating game and would let you have fun, and yet the product itself was alcohol, butane and fragrance…. and nothing else. How then do you design a product that embodies the essence of the brand?

"Brand DNA is something that Seymourpowell came up with a few years ago. It was very clear to us through a number of products we designed that the client wanted to know more about a missing link, which was how they understood the brand through its emotional attributes, as well as the product itself. The DNA process allows you to bring those two things together so what you say, think, and do as a brand is the same thing. That's very, very important if you want clarity - and you must have clarity otherwise your consumer isn't going to understand you."
Richard Seymour

"The DNA tool 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 brands strategic armoury."
Steven Miles, ex-Axe

So how do you actually design a product to work with the brand?
The first thing is to get an agreement on what we mean by brand. When Seymourpowell talks about brand we mean a simple sentence - A series of promises that do not change over time. So while the brand is making promises that don't change (otherwise the brand would flicker), the product and the way it articulates its core offer can change, as the world around it changes. What we've been doing at Seymourpowell is finding how to articulate the brand through its products. And a great way of looking at something like that is to take Aston Martin. A contemporary Aston Martin from now is bang up-to-date, superbly engineered, with lots of electronics inside it and is actually a very different vehicle from what it was say 20 or thirty years ago. Yet spiritually, it's the same - a mechanical animal with huge grace and poise and power. So the brand has become even more focused and clear but the product itself has moved on. So we think of the product as an articulation of the brand.

The Axe brand incorporated a tension: on the one side there were insecurities, such as 'I don't want to smell bad' or 'what if I don't get the girl?' and on the other side an extraordinary sense of Alpha Male - the sexually predatory character. So if the Axe brand is about this interesting metaphorical connection between the sexual predator on one side and on the other a human side, then looking at the best tensions between it we then have to see the best way to make a product feel like that as well. So the product needed to feel confident, it needed to feel mature and it also needed to have a feeling of fun - of playfulness inside it.

The playfulness unlocks the overly sincere nature that would otherwise be there in the brand. It says look at me, I'm incredibly ugly and spotty, but with Axe/Lynx I can get this incredibly beautiful woman! Anyone stopping for a moment and thinking about it would realise that's ridiculous, rather it's something we want to believe inside and that's the playful component in the brand coming through. So these two tensions working together produce a fantastic threesome through the product.

The new Axe / Lynx can
'Neutron was the internal code name for the can. The twist cap came from originally looking at Zoom lenses, techie things that you'd find in T3 magazine – boys' things, because guys love to play with stuff like that. It's rather like when you've got a Zippo lighter and you keep flicking the lid. That is part of playfulness - the engagement of the product. We love the little clicks it makes and these little details add value. It's just an aerosol, but the Neutron can behaves like it's something much more sophisticated. So out of the darkness, the feral and this much more amusing and engaging side arose from its fundamental DNA and we can see how that's going to happen again and again in the future.'
Richard Seymour


'WINNER – SILVER AWARD, Starpack Awards 2007
In this highly competitive and rapidly evolving market, this technically-innovative pack offers excellent shelf impact and consumer convenience'
Judges comments

'It also comes in 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?
VERDICT: (Whiffy) Genius'
T3 Magazine, April 2007