Axe is telling guys how to quiff with an Instagroom campaign

Now here’s some brand marketing foolishness. Axe had 30 allegedly influential instagrammers be yentas and inspire young guys to start styling with Axe hair products — all packaged up in an Instagroom campaign.

Hair gel for the cool young dude

Axe thinks it’s time young men start rubbing in the goo. The Axe Instagroom site touts to have a “3-step guide to pulling off the perfect look.”

Excuse me, but, perfect look? Is styling your hair into the Messy Man Bun, Rockabilly, Braids for Men, The Comb Over or Modern Quiff considered perfect?

Not quite, because if it was already they wouldn’t need popular internet personalities to showcase their luscious locks. Currently, not many men use hair products in their daily morning routine, which means the Axe-inspired Instagram videos have a ways to go. Influence marketing, however, is growing in popularity, so maybe they have the right idea.

Influencing hair and purchasing decisions

Each of the Instagroom videos walk guys through the hairstyling necessities of the modern man. The Instagram influencers who made the videos were given Axe product to use and the freedom to craft whatever messages they wanted, and their messages will be seen by the collective millions of fans they have garnered on the web. They are writers, producers, actors and umm, hairstylists with the goal to encourage millions of fans to style their hair in that effortless, “I’m 24 and just rolled out of bed” look every day — and of course, use Axe products to do it.

Axe is totally into pushing guy-centric messaging. The videos made by Axe’s “Hair Creators” are entirely chick-free, focusing instead on what most consider guy-stuff, like driving and skateboarding and, in general, just hanging out. Think back to early 2000’s; Axe had a stinky campaign for cologne-like body sprays for young men that were the end-all, be-all of making them appealing. The message to young guys delivered most memorably in spots like 2006’s “Billions”—that if they squirted some of this magic potion under their arms, the babes would come running. Fech!

A hair off the mark

While each video has it’s own unique style, and is unscripted from Axe, it’s still an advertising campaign, and the viewers know. Comments have been somewhat negative, which isn’t surprising considering the appeal of online Influencers is that it’s an unscripted look into the life of an interesting person.

The internet personalities were apparently given the freedom to make their message their own, which explains the lack of continuity between their hair stories. To me though, it sounds more like a lot of mixed messages lost between jokes me and my gel-less hair are just too old to get.

Looks like I’ll be sticking with my own perfect look, thank you very much.

Howard Davidson, Arlington, MA

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