In 2018, AXE was on a mission to increase its credibility in the number one passion point for gen z guys—music. Could AXE, the brand known for getting guys noticed in the real world also get guys noticed in the music world?
91% of music artists are struggling unknowns—with 20MM of them uploading to Soundcloud hoping a music label will discover them as the next big thing. So, to help these artists get seen and heard, we created AXE THE LABEL. A first-of-its-kind platform that elevated undiscovered SoundCloud artists through turning the music streaming service into a tool for collaboration and discovery, with hip hop's biggest names: Lil Yachty + Zaytoven. By hijacking the Soundcloud comment section, where listeners traditionally show their love, we let fans show their talent instead—the best tracks (each named after an AXE signature fragrance) made it onto this generation's version of an album, a fire playlist.
In the end, AXE THE LABEL saw a 76% increase in positive AXE brand mentions and earned us the most comments ever on SoundCloud. But most importantly, we broke 10 undiscovered artists into the music scenes—with their music listens increasing by over 3,250%, we innovated the way artists collaborate on a social music platform and saw one of our guy's tracks reach 1.4 million listens while becoming the first branded song to reach Soundcloud's top charts. Proving that AXE can take undiscovered artists from anonymity to notoriety… all without the help of a music label.
