In 2023, Axe launched its new “Fine Fragrance” collection which statistically rivaled luxury colognes like Bleu de Chanel in consumer testing. As a result, Axe sought to gain access to key premium lifestyle and fashion titles like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar for launch coverage. If we were to crack the luxury space - one Axe has been historically rejected from - we needed to create imagery befitting the fragrance collection’s credentials in their ability to stand up against luxury alternatives.
So, we worked with Grant Cornett and Noemi Bonazzi - two creators whose imagery consistently populates the luxury fragrance realm - to create a more premium vision of Axe around the three hero scents in the collection. However, we did not want to create imagery that accessed this realm at the expense of the brand’s youthful and playful identity. So, we satirized the classic “ingredients spread” visual fragrance paradigm by choosing to populate the frame not only with the literal ingredients in the bottle, but also the “cultural” ingredients that define our target consumer.
Credits
Executive Creative Director: Nicholas Rotondi
Photographer: Grant Cornett
Set Design: Noemi Bonazzi
Production: Rida Chin
Retoucher: Zach Vitale
