OLD SPICE Like many others, my first tentative experience with aftershave was with Old Spice. The Beaujolais Nouveau of colognes, it was satisfying but shallow – a confection of nutmeg, star anise and citrus at the top of its perfume pyramid, with deeper, masculine notes below. Launched in 1938, by the Shulton Company, it really had become grandpa’s brand – the musk had become musty. It was fuddy-duddy and the very definition of uncool, a half-a-billion dollar business highly concentrated in a big and still-profitable footprint. Then the axe fell: the relaunch by Unilever of a demographically interesting range of men’s toiletries which had previously just jogged along. It was all the more dangerous because Axe had launched in the US a few years earlier. Axe’s weapon was the oldest known – sex – and the Axe effect depositioned Old Spice even more. The Axe user became more attractive to women, as simple as that.