The FIFA World Cup 2026 is an immense global phenomenon, with an enormous audience across markets and a huge opportunity for brands all over to make a lasting impression. Marketing campaigns range from special in-person activations like watch parties and immersive spaces to social campaigns and tried-and-true commercials.
In time with the tournament, AXE (Lynx in the UK) launched a collection that’s best described as a return to fine fragrance, featuring three new products and a slogan, “Smell your best when you look your worst”, that places the brand in the stands with fans, challenging the chaotic essence of sports-watching at a sensory level.
We had the opportunity to speak with Caroline Gregory, Global Brand Director of AXE/Lynx, on partnering with FIFA, the launch and the return to fine fragrance at Casa Fresh in Mexico City after the opening match.
Global Cosmetic Industry: How did you decide on the FIFA World Cup 2026 partnership? What impact are you looking for out of that?
Caroline Gregory: Firstly, when we started, because it's a Unilever-wide partnership, not just an AXE one. We sort of asked ourselves: football and fragrance, what do they have to do with each other? You know, because obviously that's not a natural fit.
We know football just couldn't be more relevant for young guys. So how do we use this moment, the World Cup, to drive relevance to the brand, but into our fine fragrance variants.
So that's why, you know, Marshmallow Smoke is completely re-dressed through the lens of the World Cup, because we know that young guys will look at that pack and go ’oh my god, I want it’. But then also bringing them into one of our best scents yet, Marshmallow Smoke.
We're looking to really drive buzz on social. Which again, ultimately, is back to the desire to build maximum relevance.
Global Cosmetic Industry: What was the process that led to deciding and creating a plan to reimagine the brand as you have with the new fragrance launches?
Gregory: AXE was founded in 1983 in France, and it was born to bring fine fragrances into deodorants. Over time, we became far more into what was on-trend in fragrance, and we stopped talking about the quality of the scents that we had.
Through the launch of the fine fragrances, that’s really been the focus. Making sure that all of the scents that we launch are of the quality of a luxury cologne. That's been a game-changer for us in really reestablishing that AXE is the master of fragrance when it comes to deodorants.
Doing that in a way that is ownably AXE, which is where fine fragrance quality comes in, was really important for us to reestablish.
Global Cosmetic Industry: So it's more of a return. Not inspired by metrics, social listening or anything?
Gregory: Exactly.
Global Cosmetic Industry: What do you think contributed to fulfilling that goal? Actually doing it. Did you look at anything? What kind of conversations did you have to have?
Gregory: We looked at what young people want in scents today, because the fragrance profiles are totally different today than what they were.
If you think of some of our biggest fragrances today in the market, they'd be far more classically masculine in the past, very in the fougère space. What you see with young people is that they're far more playful, experimental and they're less traditionally masculine.
At the heart of this, through the process we worked with the perfumers and the fine fragrance houses, was that this is where fine fragrance is moving.
For us to appeal to that audience and elevate ourselves to fine fragrance quality, we needed to evolve the way we were doing fragrance. Therefore, it's become far less gendered.
There's a better balance of the kind of scent that we deliver, whether it's more gourmand with the cherry spiritz, vanilla or the way we do fougère today. Like blue lavender, has got a twist that makes it way less masculine than a fougère would have traditionally.
Global Cosmetic Industry: Rebuilding this brand in this direction. Is there anything that has had to shift or be reworked? Has there been anything you’ve been applying as you go?
Gregory: Yeah, I think we're all moving. We're all living in a world now that's moving so fast.
It's changing whether it's AI, whether it's the world of social, I mean, it changes every minute. We're always trying to grapple with, well, what does that mean?
The thing that I'm trying to hold on to is that we need to build a brand that's differentiated. The thing that keeps me up at night sometimes is that we’re in a world now where you let go a bit more.
More people need to be involved in the brand, whether that’s content creators or a move into UGC participation. And when you start producing, you know, 100s of 1000s of pieces of content, how do you make sure that’s still distinctly AXE?
That's one of the things that we’re struggling with. We want participation- it's much more meaningful bringing people into the brand, but how do you still make sure that that becomes ownably AXE.
Then, with collabs, I'd say it's like making sure that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Ultimately, you both bring something to the party and then make it more enriching for consumers. For AXE, that means it needs to be something totally unexpected. At the heart of when AXE works best, it's when you wouldn't see it coming.
It's a bit like the AXE World Cup campaign, you know, it's not something people expected. And that’s AXE at its best.
Global Cosmetic Industry: This collection has really conceptual names, like Indigo Haze and Marshmallow Smoke and then you have White Vetiver, which is a very spot-on ingredient reference. That really does root the perception in fine fragrance again. Do you have anything to say about that at all?
Gregory: I think for us, as we want it to reestablish our roots in fine fragrance, we felt we needed to be more ingredient-led, but we mix that with a color because young guys shop by color. What we find is that young guys will say to their parents, buy me the white one, buy me the blue one.
The color was our way of also making it a bit less expected. Obviously, you come to a point with colors where you can only go so far. Marshmallow Smoke for us still has a color because you can associate smoke with color, same with marshmallow and likewise with indigo haze. Indigo is obviously an ingredient, but it's also a color.
Global Cosmetic Industry: I think that the return to fine fragrance has been really interesting, and it's coming at a time when I think masculinity is sort of being allowed to be a little more explorative, too. So, how do you capitalize on a moment like the World Cup long-term? How do you make the partnership work outside of the actual matches? How do you capitalize on that?
Gregory: We've got many moments planned throughout the whole tournament. The best thing about the slogan “smell your best while looking your worst” is that it's a global platform but then there’s execution.
It's for all of the markets, and it brings them to life in totally different manners to hit their mark.
So everybody's watching to look for moments that we can react to, but only when AXE is relevant, and that's been what's been key to me, with the team. Finding just the moments that are relevant and then maximizing those.
Global Cosmetic Industry: How do you feel about what you've seen in response to that strategy and the control you keep over the brand from being thoughtful and curated about how you engage in the moment?
Gregory: It's something that we're always learning. We used to, there would be some trend on TikTok, and we would jump into that. What we reflected back on is sure, you can get loads of engagement this way, but what is it actually doing to build the brand?
Consumers move on so quickly, and it hasn't left a distinct memory with them. So I think we're a bit less concerned about jumping into every trend rather than only doing that when AXE is relevant.
Because we're a brand that's about humor, to do humor well, you do need a bit more quality and execution because a good joke told badly falls flat immediately. We’re trying to do less daily and do more to make the moments really matter.
Global Cosmetic Industry: Do you notice a trend and are you guys leaning a little bit more into lifestyle? If so, how does that look or make sense to you?
Gregory: The way we're looking at it is more of moments where attraction would be at risk, but then the power of fragrance. So we see it through that lens, which hopefully for us is a little bit wider. But we definitely think we haven't done a lot yet in fashion, to be honest. I think it is a space that we're certainly open to.
Global Cosmetic Industry: Are there any trends like smellmaxxing that you're leaning into to inform how you move forward?
Gregory: So smellmaxxing, we’re definitely looking at. Young guys are really quite obsessed with it. I think that they don't necessarily know what the perfect way in is. Of course, because of the science that exists at Unilever, we have 1000s of scientists who are looking at every aspect, from odor, for underarms, to what fragrance can do for you emotionally.
When you bring all of that together, then there's a real power to help create the absolute ultimate smellmaxxing regimen.
Layering for us is another really, really big space. So we're looking at that.
And then we're seeing young guys becoming quite experimental, more playful. We're always looking at future trends and where that may lead to next.
Global Cosmetic Industry: When you decide on a cultural moment like this, what, if at all, are any risks or obstacles with trying to find that point of connection, trying to find a point of resonance? With the “smell your best when you look your worst” platform, things like Casa Fresh how do you, with all these moving pieces, aim for maximum efficiency and identify success?
Gregory: What's really important is that we always find a way to be totally ownable to AXE. I think, for example, the work we do in the World Cup, we spent the time.
We have a wonderful agency identifying what the cultural insight would be right for AXE.
AXE isn't about the performance on the field- we're about the fans. So what do the fans do? That's the way we looked at it.
Then we understood that, you know, it's true that young people perhaps don't look their best when they're excited. So there's a way to just dramatize that and again, it's done with absurdity. AXE isn't a real brand, but it is reinforcing the power of a fragrance in a totally absurd manner. And that's the most important thing, the connection of fragrance, humor and attraction, and the attraction is AXE.
That's really important to us, whatever partnership we do has to help us build the brand we're trying to build. Ultimately everything is about the power of fragrance because, as we talked before, we're on a journey to reassert and remind people of the quality that AXE has.
