One Company, Two Brands, Two Completely Different Messages

In class we briefly discussed 
Unilever. How many of y'all had heard of 
Unilever
before class? I personally had no idea about it until recently. However, if I had to guess most of you probably would have heard Axe prior to discussing it in class. The same probably rings true of Dove? 

Recently, I learned that both Axe and Dove are owned by the same company: Unilever. If you know anything about the two brands, you know that they have two totally different messages for their audience. 
Axe is all about "getting the woman." Just take a look at the description of the Axe brand from Unilever's website:

While Dove has a completely different message. Dove uses real people, not models for their commercials. They are about finding everyone's beauty. Here is what Unilever says about the Dove brand:

So the same company that is making women objects who have no control when they smell Axe (the "Axe Effect" as they call it), is also trying to build women's self esteem through the Dove brand... hmmmm... I see some contradictions do you?

Here is one of Axe's commercials.
There are so many of them and they all have a similar message: if you wear Axe, women will not be able to resist you. 

Below is one of Dove's commercials with the opposite message. Dove's brand has been about embracing women and showing what makes them beautiful. You don't need a certain body type or need to look a certain way to be beautiful, because you are beautiful.

There is a clear conflicting message between the two brands. The groundswell took notice of this. Check out this article posted on US News.
Or one of the other countless blog posts, and articles out there that speaks on this huge contradiction from Unilever. 

This excerpt comes from AdAge, one of the many articles that exist on this controversy. Dove's video above was at the start of their campaign to advocate for real beauty, what everyone has. Even though this was a great campaign, it received flak, because the groundswell noticed this hypocrisy at Unilever. So the groundswell went to work posting about this. And you know what, it seems that Unilever may just have listened. Take a look at one of Axe's newer commercials. 

Axe has begun to change its image. There is a huge difference between this commercial and the other one I posted. This commercial received a lot of positive feedback. 

 

 

So it looks like when Unilever listens to the groundswell it works out in their favor. Even though this commercial is appealing to the groundswell, their website still does not reflect this change. They need to fix this or the groundswell will see this was just a front and that Unilever has not really changed.

Do you think Unilever has changed or do you think the Axe commercial was just to appease the groundswell?