• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, March 2, 2012

Maybe hot, half-naked angels are a language everyone understands. Well, everyone AXE is trying to reach at least.

The innovative deodorant brand that’s become known for edgy and daring marketing across new mediums worked with its ITV agency BrightLine to create a gaming console-centric interactive campaign that stretched across 20 countries and about 30 million potential gamers in 2011 via Sony PlayStations.

That’s a broad reach for an ITV effort and will likely be just the beginning as ITV ads are poised for a broader global footprint as ITV technology becomes more compatible across borders.
But like any good campaign, the initiative for Unilever’s AXE started with the brand’s goals in mind — to reach its core demo of young men and those consumers are often found in front of their gaming consoles.

The branded “mini-game” lived in the PlayStation home environment and stemmed from an AXE commercial featuring the aforementioned hot, half-naked female angels falling from the sky. Gamers had the chance to earn AXE-branded prizes for their PlayStation avatars and also to perform so-called “branded moves” with the avatars, in particular the pit-pit-chest move. BrightLine has worked with AXE since 2005, creating a series of ITV campaigns spanning satellite, cable, VOD and XBox Live.

Adding the Sony PlayStation was a next logical step, explains Mattia Nicodano, experience design director at BrightLine. Plus, AXE fans on Facebook who had seen a similar angel-centric campaign for the Xbox had asked for a branded experience for the PlayStation, too, he says. “We had requests from outside the U.S. on the AXE page. Gamers were asking for the experience in Europe, Africa, the Middle East. This gave us the chance to combine an interactive experience with consumer engagement by connecting the content to engagement.”

BrightLine is exploring how to build on this project with AXE. “Now that we seeded the gaming universe with this branded move that users can download, it’s there. This could be used for a future campaign. You could use it as a key to unlock branded content, exclusive features, sweepstakes,” he said.

BrightLine declined to disclose the number of downloads or interaction with the campaign, but did share social activity stats. For starters, many gamers posted videos of themselves doing the AXE move — about 22 posts on YouTube had generated around 2,000 views, Nicodano says. Small numbers, to be sure, but brand execs say they’re a reflection of a subset of consumers who are enthusiastic and committed enough to make videos of gaming — the brand evangelists, if you will. Tweets about the move reached more than 30,000 Twitter users. Also, AXE has generated 764 comments and 3,600 likes on Facebook specifically for the angel campaign.

The AXE work could provide a template of sorts for other brands. Gaming consoles are a smart way to scale ITV because they provide a built-in global reach. But even beyond consoles, Nicodano says ITV campaigns are becoming easier to replicate globally as cable operators have begun implementing ITV technology that works with service providers in other countries, too.

Look for more international work to come soon. BrightLine has seen more clients requesting that campaigns developed in the U.S. be rolled out worldwide and across mobile phones. “The future is a matter of finding other screens where our ITV experience can be translated and be active,” he says. “All the tablets, all the smart phones are blurring the lines because all you need is a screen to access the ITV content.”