March 24, 2026
Dolores Assalini
Head Of Axe N.A.
Second Wind: How Axe is rewriting the marketing spray-book for a new gen
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Nearly one in two American men used Axe body spray at the brand's peak in the mid-2000s. By 2025, its share of the U.S. deodorant spray market had dropped to 16.3%. The turnaround story now unfolding at Axe is not just about a product reformulation or a clever campaign. It is about how legacy brands can reclaim cultural relevance by fundamentally rethinking how they reach, engage, and earn the trust of a new generation of consumers.
In a recent episode of The Speed of Culture podcast, Matt Britton sits down with Dolores Assalini, Head of Axe US at Unilever, to unpack how one of the most iconic men's grooming brands in history is rebuilding its connection with Gen Z consumers. The conversation offers a masterclass in what happens when a brand stops running from its reputation and starts running toward it, while also revealing how AI-powered discovery is reshaping the entire marketing landscape.
For business leaders navigating the intersection of consumer behavior, social media strategy, and emerging technology, the lessons from Axe's reinvention are both timely and broadly applicable. As Britton frequently emphasizes in his AI keynote presentations, the brands that will lead tomorrow are the ones willing to dismantle the playbooks that built them.
Every brand has a reputation it did not choose. For Axe, that reputation was the "Axe cloud"—the overwhelming mist that became a cultural punchline in middle school hallways and locker rooms across America. For years, the brand largely ignored the joke. That silence allowed others to define the narrative.
Axe's new campaign, "The History of Overdoing It," flips that dynamic entirely. Rather than distancing itself from the overspraying problem, the brand confronts it head-on with humor, honesty, and a product innovation that actually solves the issue. The campaign features a scholarly narrator chronicling moments when men have historically overdone things, landing on Axe's own product as the punchline—and the solution. The brand simultaneously launched a patented spray technology that delivers a lighter, more controlled mist and promises 10% more sprays per can.
Assalini explains on the podcast that the campaign works because the product truth and the cultural insight are the same story. The joke already existed in the world. Axe simply told it first, and backed it with something real.
This approach reflects a broader principle that Matt Britton explores in his national bestseller Generation AI: the brands that earn trust with younger consumers are those willing to be transparent about their imperfections. Gen Z, in particular, rewards authenticity over polish. Research shows that 56% of Gen Z consumers are more likely to trust brands committed to publishing human-created content, and they can detect the difference between a brand being real and a brand performing realness.
The lesson for enterprise leaders is clear. Your brand's most well-known liability may be your most powerful asset—if you have the courage to own it and the product innovation to back it up.
When Assalini joined Axe a year and a half ago, the brand was still allocating part of its media budget to linear television. Her first decision was to eliminate that entirely. Not because television has ceased to exist, but because it no longer reaches Axe's core consumer in a way that generates meaningful engagement.
What replaced linear TV was not simply a reshuffled media mix. It was an entirely different philosophy of communication. The brand now evaluates every piece of content through the lens of community engagement. The question is no longer "will people see this?" but rather "what do we want them to say back?" and "what do we want them to do?"
The data supports this shift decisively. According to recent research, 41% of Gen Z consumers now turn to social media first when searching for information—surpassing traditional search engines. Social platforms collectively drive over 60% of product discovery in the United States, with TikTok leading at 16.7%, right behind YouTube. Total spend on social media advertising is projected to reach $317 billion in 2026, and social commerce in the U.S. is expected to surpass $100 billion this year.
Assalini frames this transition as moving from broadcast to participation. Britton, who has delivered over 500 keynotes across five continents on consumer transformation, frequently makes a similar argument: the era of pushing content at consumers is over. The brands winning today are the ones creating spaces for consumers to participate in the story.
For CMOs and brand leaders still debating whether to shift more budget toward social, the message from Axe's experience is unambiguous. Social-first is not a line item. It is an operating system. And the brands that have not made this shift are still solving the wrong problem.
One of the most striking insights from the podcast is how Axe approaches creator partnerships. In the "History of Overdoing It" campaign, creators are not brand ambassadors in the traditional sense. They are not handed a script and told to deliver key messages. They are given a premise and the freedom to make it their own.
That distinction matters enormously. Assalini explains that young consumers can immediately sense the difference between a creator telling their own story and a creator reading a brand's story. The campaign specifically invites creators to share their personal experiences of overdoing it, whether in dating, in life, or with the product itself. The result is content that feels authentic because it genuinely is.
This approach also reflects a structural reality about how distribution works on social platforms in 2026. A creator with one follower can generate five million views on the right video. Reach is no longer a function of audience size. It is a function of content quality and resonance.
The influencer marketing industry has grown to approximately $32.55 billion globally, and the economics increasingly favor micro and nano creators who deliver higher engagement rates because their audiences feel a more personal connection. Nearly seven out of ten brands now report achieving more than double their investment from influencer marketing campaigns, with short-form videos between 30 seconds and two minutes delivering the strongest ROI.
For enterprise brands accustomed to tightly controlled messaging, this represents a fundamental philosophical shift. The instinct to control every word a creator says is the very thing that makes branded content feel inauthentic. The brands succeeding with Gen Z are the ones comfortable relinquishing creative control in exchange for genuine connection.
As Britton often discusses in his keynotes to Fortune 500 leaders, the most effective marketing in the AI era is not about what brands say to consumers. It is about what consumers say to each other about brands.
Perhaps the most forward-looking moment in the podcast comes when Assalini describes a quiet experiment she ran before the episode. She asked a large language model what it knew about Axe in 2026. What came back was essentially the campaign in summary: the product technology, the cultural insight, the brand's honest self-reckoning.
Her read on this is practical rather than philosophical. Large language models are increasingly how people search for and evaluate products. The brands that show up well in those AI-generated results are the ones that have invested in clear, credible, and culturally grounded messaging across the right channels. It is not about gaming the model. It is about doing the work well enough that the model reflects it accurately.
This observation aligns with a broader structural shift that Britton has been tracking closely through his work with Suzy, the AI-powered consumer intelligence platform, and his FutureProof AI community. According to a recent Affiliate Summit study, 74% of U.S. consumers have used AI-powered tools like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews to help them shop, find products, or choose brands in the past six months. AI visibility—how often and how prominently a brand appears inside AI-generated search results—has become a measurable performance channel rather than an abstract concept.
Assalini also points to a more fundamental disruption. The internet's front door is changing. The path from Google search to Amazon that shaped over two decades of digital commerce is being compressed and rerouted through AI intermediaries. Brands that built their entire discoverability strategy on traditional search engine rankings will need to rethink what presence means in this new layer.
The implications are significant for every business leader. Answer Engine Optimization—ensuring your brand's information is structured for AI extraction and recommendation—is no longer a niche concern for SEO teams. It is a C-suite priority that affects how the next generation of consumers discovers, evaluates, and chooses your products.
Through all the discussion of platform shifts, spray technology, and AI discovery, Assalini keeps returning to something simple. People want to hear great stories about great products. The medium changes. The algorithm changes. The platform changes. The underlying human need does not.
Whether it was a pamphlet for Avon in the early 2010s or a TikTok comment thread in 2026, the question underneath every marketing decision remains the same: is this a story worth telling, and is it reaching the right person in the right way?
This perspective echoes a theme Britton develops extensively in Generation AI: technology accelerates everything, but the fundamentals of human connection and storytelling remain constant. The brands that mistake the tool for the craft will always be chasing the next platform. The brands that understand people first and technology second will always be ahead.
For younger marketers especially, Assalini offers a piece of advice that cuts through the noise: find something you are passionate about, and the skills will follow. Because curiosity about the craft is what keeps you ahead of the tools—no matter how fast those tools evolve.
Axe is confronting its overspraying reputation directly through the "History of Overdoing It" campaign, pairing cultural self-awareness with a patented spray technology that delivers a lighter, more controlled application. The brand has also shifted entirely away from linear TV to a social-first strategy built around creator partnerships and community engagement, meeting Gen Z consumers where they actually spend their time.
The shift reflects a fundamental change in consumer behavior. Research shows 41% of Gen Z now turns to social media first for information, surpassing traditional search engines. Social platforms drive over 60% of product discovery in the U.S., and total social advertising spend is projected to reach $317 billion in 2026. Linear TV simply no longer reaches younger consumers in a way that drives meaningful engagement or participation.
Answer Engine Optimization is the practice of structuring your brand's content and messaging so that AI-powered search tools—including ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude—accurately represent and recommend your products when consumers ask questions. With 74% of U.S. consumers now using AI tools for product discovery, brands that are invisible in AI-generated answers risk losing a rapidly growing share of demand.
The most effective approach treats creators as co-authors rather than brand ambassadors. Instead of handing creators scripts with key messages, leading brands provide a premise and creative freedom. Research consistently shows that audiences can distinguish between creators sharing authentic stories and creators delivering brand talking points. Micro and nano creators often deliver the highest engagement rates due to stronger personal connections with their audiences.
The Axe reinvention story is ultimately about something bigger than body spray. It is about how legacy brands can earn their way back into cultural conversations by being honest, relinquishing control, and meeting consumers where they are—both on social platforms and inside AI-generated answers.
Matt Britton's conversation with Dolores Assalini offers a blueprint that applies far beyond the personal care aisle. For leaders across industries navigating the convergence of social-first marketing, creator economies, and AI-powered discovery, the principles are the same: lead with authenticity, build for participation, and prepare for a discovery layer that is being rewritten in real time.
Hear the full conversation on The Speed of Culture podcast, and for a deeper exploration of how AI is reshaping consumer behavior across generations, explore Matt Britton's national bestseller Generation AI. To bring these insights to your next leadership event, visit Matt Britton's speaking platform or connect with his team directly.
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