Talk to your child, before they get mauled by women.

I was pretty surprised that Dove and Axe had the same parent company but campaigns that totally went against each other. Its like ordering one of your children to love themselves for who they are and having the other one think they're not good enough so they should smell good to get girls.
1) I was proud of the Dove campaign for real beauty. We get told several times in our lives that people are beautiful in our own way. We're beautiful even if we don't cake-up our faces with make-up, even if we don't look like the people in magazines, or have implants although some people or the media says otherwise. Dove wanted to eliminate the stereotype's about what being beautiful is and I respect them for that. They are raising self-esteem for people out there who were primarily self-conscious about their physical appearance since they don't fit the description of "beauty".
2) The Axe Effect campaign was the complete opposite of the dove campaign. Watching this made me raise an eyebrow. Why were these women travelling to the amazon in bikinis? Did they just walk on water? Women like men who are clean, just because a man smells like he spilled a whole bottle of perfume on himself it doesn't make him so irresistible that it sends us running to tackle him...
3)I think that a parent company doesn't really take much action to ensure that all their sectors express the same beliefs and values. Many products take different approaches of promoting their products and whatever sells-well...sells. Its not a publicly known fact that Dove and Axe have the same parent company, therefore people don't hold Unilever responsible for the contradicting messages Dove and Axe have. Although both ads do exert some kind of message of confidence to the consumer, you're naturally beautiful;you feel just as beautiful as everyone else out there, you think you smell good; some girls might think so too.

Is it? Is it... really?

I love the types of ads that make you feel something or go "AHA!", laugh, or feel something... anything. These ads made me confused and just made me question what the heck they were thinking.
The tape worm ad; Yeah, okay... because tape worms inside you isn't gross at all right? Nor is it healthy for you. Sure, you can eat all you want, but are you really gonna risk your health and go as far as eating tape worms just to stay thin? How bout you just eat right and exercise...? I know its not as easy done than said, but it's the healthier better way.
Blow it in her face ad; Blow smoke in her face why don't you, cuz that's really sexy. Yeah right. One, it's rude and Two, it's called "Second-hand smoke"... yeah you die from that. You die from SMOKING period.
Lard ad; There are many healthier alternatives for lard. I doubt lard really makes anyone as happy as it says on the ad... maybe they just came from a family outting. They also won't be that healthy-looking if they love lard that much. RIght?
Doctors and camel ad; This ad makes people realize that even doctors smoke cigarettes and therefore they think "Hey if people who went through so many years of post-grad medical school smoke "Camels" then maybe I won't die from it." WRONG! Just because doctors choose this type of cigarette doesnt give them a lower chance of dying from a desease inflicted by smoking.

All in all, I think that these ads were ran with the intention of obviously selling a product. Big time companies knew that physical appearance is important to people and thats what they target in order to earn a profit. They pin-pointed people's insecurities. Nowadays, ads are more into healthier options of losing weight, and even cigarette boxes contain warnings of the things that can be caused by smoking. There are more ads on tv about healthy eating and quiting smoking than anything else.