The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2025
Axe's sweet-scent films make teddies, dogs and babies attack — El Ojo 2025 Film GP
To launch its sweetest scents, Axe cast jealous teddies, dogs and babies in absurd physical-comedy films — no CGI — and won El Ojo 2025's Gran Ojo Film.
Axe/Lynx (Unilever)
What it had to solve
Axe had rebuilt its 'Power of Fragrance' platform on absurd comedy — 2024's Robbery and Funeral films won the El Ojo Film Grand Prix. The harder brief was to launch the brand's sweetest-ever fragrances without losing that humor and without leaning on AI or CGI.
How it works
In 2024, Axe's 'Robbery' and 'Funeral' films won the El Ojo Film Grand Prix and rebuilt the brand around absurdist comedy. The next brief was harder: launch the sweetest fragrance range Axe had ever made without abandoning that humor — and without leaning on AI or CGI.
LOLA MullenLowe and director Lionel Goldstein answered with 'Sweeter than the sweetest': three cinematic comedies in which a man's sweet scent turns the world against him. Jealous teddy bears beat him up when his girlfriend leaves the room; a dog boxes him; a baby turns violent. Every reaction is played for real, physical comedy, with stunts and performance doing what digital effects would normally do.
The campaign launched in Mexico, Argentina, the UK and Australia with out-of-home, immersive audio and social extensions, expanding the absurdist universe the brand had built. At El Ojo 2025 it took the Gran Ojo Film plus a Gold in the Products film category, and LOLA MullenLowe won a second Gran Ojo the same edition for Cornetto's 'Unwrap the Summer'.
The idea worked because the product attribute wrote the story: sweetness is the plot device, so the comedy is also the proof. In an era of AI spectacle, a genuinely funny, handmade film was still the most disruptive thing the brand could make.
Why it lands
- It made the product attribute the plot: the fragrance's sweetness causes the chaos, so every laugh is also a claim about the scent.
- Choosing physical comedy over CGI was a deliberate craft bet that made the work stand out in an awards year dominated by AI-generated spectacle.
- It extended the brand's established absurdist universe instead of resetting it, compounding recognition from the previous Grand Prix-winning films.
- It sold an unfamiliar idea — sweet men's fragrance — by dramatizing reactions rather than describing notes, which is more memorable and shareable.
What it did
Sweeter than the sweetest won El Ojo 2025's Gran Ojo Film plus a Gold in the Products film category, giving LOLA MullenLowe two Grands Prix at the festival; juries praised its artisanal, effect-free filmmaking in an awards year dominated by AI spectacle.
What you can take
Let the product attribute write the comedy: sweetness is the plot device, so every laugh also proves the claim — and a genuinely funny, handmade film can outshine CGI spectacle.
Since then
Sweeter than the sweetest was named Gran Ojo Film at El Ojo 2025, adding a Gold in the Products film category, and helped LOLA MullenLowe become one of the festival's most awarded agencies that year — it also took the Gran Ojo Gráfica for Cornetto's 'Unwrap the Summer'. The campaign continued Axe's 'Power of Fragrance' platform into 2025, with the three films distributed as cinema, TV and social content across global markets.
Sources
- 'Sweeter than the sweetest' conquistó el Gran Ojo Film
- Axe unleashes the power of sweetness
- El Ojo 2025: Todos los trabajos ganadores
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