AXE MATTE EFFECT: SOCIAL EFFORT SCALE

Objective

AXE launched this interactive experience to promote its Matte Effect product line and reinforce the brand's core positioning of 'less effort, more style.' The campaign targeted young men who over-exert themselves on social media, offering a tongue-in-cheek tool to reflect on their digital behavior. The Social Effort Scale served as both brand awareness and engagement driver for the Matte Effect grooming product.

Solution

The Social Effort Scale is an interactive website that measures users' 'social effort' through a proprietary algorithm analyzing their social media behavior. Users authenticate via Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, and the system scores their activity based on hashtag frequency and type, emoji usage, post frequency, and posting patterns on a scale from -500 to +500. The experience was built as a fully responsive HTML5 web application accessible across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices, connecting seamlessly with major social platforms. UNIT9 developed the technical architecture and algorithm that processes real-time social media data for scoring.

Results

The campaign won FWA Site of the Day and FWA Mobile Site of the Day, and generated substantial press coverage across 9+ major publications including Fast Company, Business Insider, and Daily Mail. However, significant metrics were actually published: the campaign achieved 32% sales increase in the first month post-launch, 22% in following months, generated over 2.3 million Twitter impressions, reached 55,000+ website sessions, and engaged 48,000 users with an average of 3 minutes on site.