The Axe Effect: Using SPAM to Their Advantage?

A co-worker recently passed me a link to a video showing one of the most creative (yet spammiest) email campaigns I’ve ever seen. The campaign is for Axe Body Spray in Germany. It’s a viral campaign which when the referred user gets the email and clicks on the link embedded within, they’re sent to a landing page which displays a can of Axe Body Spray. When you click on the can, it plays a songs and animates.

Then…

The user gets 15 emails from women, all with subject lines along the lines of “Hmm… hot computer! But not as hot as you =)” and “Can you do me a favor? Then I can give you my flavor!” with the final email being “You just got the AXE EFFECT!”

Now, this is an extremely creative and unique way to go about a viral email campaign, but it’s a very risky move… the agency who came up with this campaign obviously didn’t take Can-Spam compliance laws into consideration when they were executing this. I’m sure many major email clients blocked the IP this email was being sent from.

Do you think the benefits outweigh the risks in this case?

Check out the video here.