A University of Saskatchewan student has started looking for his summer job early. Vaughn Turnbull, a fourth year marketing student, is one of the 10 finalists in Axe Canada’s “Ridiculously, Ridiculously Good Summer Gig” competition. This is the first year that the company will be holding the contest.
Turnbull first heard about the competition from a television commercial and submitted an application online.
“There was a series of questions, kind of zany questions, like what circus performer would you want to be, to kind of get a sense of our personality,” said Turnbull.
He also had to provide photos of himself and reference letters from two members of the opposite sex.
However, Turnbull says the competition isn’t entirely about your ability to attract the opposite sex.
“It seems to be who can create the most buzz. There are five challenges that we have to do. It’s whoever can get the most comments and the most votes on the website.”
Since the competitor’s chances of winning depend on the votes of their peers, they have to market themselves a good deal. Turnbull has employed an aggressive campaign of self-promotion.
“I’ve been bothering everybody on Facebook. Kind of tapping into everybody I know, approaching people on the street, people that I work with, to try and create excitement for the contest, and for me indirectly.”
For many students, finding a summer job is a major challenge, which must make the contest’s prize all the more appealing. The winners will work as marketing agents and representatives of the brand, living in a furnished downtown apartment in Toronto and receiving a salary of $10,000 for the two months of work.
Turnbull says that, if he wins, his job as a “consumer consultant” will be to plan themed events and to blog about them afterwards on the Axe website to report on how young Canadians live.
“There’s kind of a date and tell component to it too, getting out on the streets, getting out into the clubs and actually giving a first hand perspective.”
Considering the hyper-sexual and often misogynistic nature of Axe’s marketing campaigns, it may be surprising to learn that half of the contestants are female. The company’s latest campaign, “The Axe Effect,” is portrayed in television commercials as a pheromone-like scent that robs females of their inhibitions. According to Colin Boyd, a U of S professor of marketing, “Sex always works, particularly amongst this kind of (young) demographic”¦ people with lots of hormones.”
Because of Axe’s controversial advertisements the female contestants’ involvement could easily be seen as an attempt by Axe to sell their product through sex in nightclubs and bars, rather than on a television screen.
“I suppose there is a degree of deception in the sense that you can’t switch it off; you’re not a willing customer of the pitch,” said Boyd. “They’re not actually coercing you to buy the product. In most social contexts I think it’s regarded as a bit of a laugh.”
Controversy aside, Turnbull says that this would be an improvement over his past summer jobs.
“I worked at a pizza shop for a number of years, flipped burgers. I’m working at a hotel now. This is more focused on what I’m trying to do with school.”
Turnbull and the other nine candidates will be depending upon the votes of students across the nation to put them ahead. The finalists will compete in a series of online challenges while the public votes for their candidate of choice on the website.
To vote for Vaughn Turnbull, visit the website at axesummergig.ca.
– –
photo: Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0