The underdog phenomenon and why we love AXE ads

Writing the last post, I started wondering - How do you gauge pop culture? ‘Pop’ stands for ‘popular’ – so, to me the top box office hit movies, the bestselling books, the most popular TV series, the chart topping music albums or even the most popular video on YouTube would be the perfect metric.

Take a quick look at most of the movies targeted at teens and college students – it is always a story of an underdog – a thin frail guy who gets the prettiest girl on campus or the braces spotting nerdy chic who transforms into a bombshell by the end of the movie. Off the top of my head, I can name tens of such movies – “College”, “Accepted”, “The Girl Next Door”, “American Pie”…the list is endless. And these are all decent commercial hits – some even became huge box office successes. There is something about these stories that we love. Throughout these movies, we constantly root for the underdog – and obviously it is the underdog who wins in the end – how else can we call it good entertainment eh?

Looking at another facet of this same phenomenon – we can see why movies/books that deal with the same ‘underdog/outcast’ metaphorically do great in the raking in money. Be it Frodo - the short, physically inferior hobbit in Lord of the Rings, Peter Parker – frail nerd with girl trouble in Spiderman, Edward – the vampire outcast in Twilight or Sam Witwicky - the nobody guy in Transformers. I think it has something to do with how our society has grown over the years. If we keep external factors such as the economy and technological advances aside – we can see that as a people – we have become more accepting and tolerant. Be it the acknowledgment that being different is not always bad – the best example is the continuous movement worldwide that gives equal rights to alternate sexualities. That’s why in movies such as those listed above – we see the underdog claiming his rightful place as a “hero” amongst his/her peers. It is why the video of Susan Boyle has millions of views on YouTube!

A lot of brands have tapped into this “underdog phenomenon” to sell their products – but I cannot think of a brand that has done this better than AXE. The ads speak for themselves.

And it has worked really well for them. Because at some level – we all connect with the “underdog” – and we all want to win before the credits roll – and if a deodorant promises me that – why not!

Why am I *still* blogging?

The past two years have been very eventful. I joined the “real world” – got a job – in advertising. I learnt a lot and met some amazing people. Soon, I was caught by the Web 2.0 fever – I devoured blogs, news sites and whitepapers – learning as much as I could. All it led to was a cerebral hodge podge of buzzwords and clichéd marketing metaphors. During this knowledge delirium – I decided to start this blog. When I read some of the old entries – I can, literally, see the lost kid trying to grapple with the information overload. I still am that lost kid. But I now realize that a blog without purpose is a headless chicken. So I have set out to define what this blog is supposed to be.

Everyday, I gather a lot of information – from the people around me, TV, blogs, RSS feeds, tweets , facebook links and so on. I want my blog to reflect how I make sense of this. From what little I have learnt about this industry – I have realized one thing - you cannot look at advertising and communication in isolation. You need to be aware of the world outside advertising – the world of economics, business, technology and most importantly culture. And advertising is – after all - the point of convergence of all the above. And I want to talk about all of them. I want to turn this blog from yet-another-blog-about-social-media to something more.