The deodorant brand that once made its name with ads suggesting that teenage boys could become irresistible to women through aggressive application of body spray is making a change in its agency arrangements.

Axe, the Unilever-owned personal care brand, has hired TBWA\Chiat\Day as its creative agency, ending a relationship with the Martin Agency that had lasted several years. The shift represents a return to the Omnicom family for the brand, which has cycled through several agency partners over the decades as it has tried to evolve its advertising voice beyond the laddish humor that defined its early American campaigns.

The Martin Agency, part of Interpublic Group, had been working to help Axe navigate what might charitably be called a delicate repositioning effort — persuading young men to buy the product without relying quite so heavily on the fantasy that it functions as a romantic pheromone. (The challenge, of course, is that the fantasy was rather effective at selling deodorant.)

TBWA\Chiat\Day, the Los Angeles-based agency that remains best known in certain circles for the 1984 Apple commercial it made four decades ago, will now take on that creative assignment. The agency is part of TBWA Worldwide, which itself sits within the Omnicom holding company structure.

A spokesman for Unilever confirmed the change but declined to discuss the strategic thinking behind it, in what has become the standard response to such inquiries.

The review process that led to the decision was not publicly announced, which is increasingly common for brands that prefer to conduct their agency evaluations without the trade press providing color commentary throughout.

For TBWA\Chiat\Day, the win adds another packaged goods account to a roster that has included various Unilever assignments over the years, suggesting that relationships between holding companies and client procurement departments continue to matter rather more than the industry's rhetoric about pure creative meritocracy might imply.

Original story published in adage.com: "Agency Brief—Axe hires TBWA\Chiat\Day after years with Martin - Ad Age"