Why are so much hair marketing so polished and over-explained? Swedish heritage brand Björn Axén’s new Creative Director asked himself when accepting his new job. Here’s what he did differently.

Brännén has spent the first months about understanding. The audience, the product philosophy, the business, the emotional connection people already have with the brand and the mission it has ahead.

What have you found out?

– Björn Axén is decades of obsession, experimentation, craftsmanship, mistakes, breakthroughs, and professional dedication distilled into products people use in everyday routines. That’s what makes it interesting to me. Behind every bottle there’s an enormous amount of accumulated knowledge.

– What struck me early on is that Björn Axén already has something most modern brands spend millions trying to manufacture: credibility. Real credibility. Equity built over decades, not quarters.

– This is the brand that democratised professional haircare in Sweden long before ‘skinification’ ingredient storytelling and salon-grade positioning became category standards. The challenge now isn’t proving expertise. The challenge is translating that legacy into relevance for a new audience in new markets. Heritage alone is not a strategy. Our international audience doesn’t automatically care that you’ve existed for decades. But they do care about philosophy, point of view, emotional relevance, about identity.

– So a lot of these first months have been about asking: How do we take all of that hard-earned equity and turn it into forward momentum? That’s where I think the real opportunity is.

The first visible result is the brand-new campaign, “Unbroken”, for the launch of the Sleek Stick. 

– But more than that, Brännén points, it’s an early signal of where we want to take the brand creatively.

– The product itself is about hold and control. At its core, the campaign is built around a very simple idea: Even if everything else gives in, your hair shouldn’t.

– The absolute majority of hair campaigns today is extremely over-explained. Ingredient. Benefit. Ingredient. Benefit. We wanted to create something people could feel before they fully rationalise it.

– We created a narrated universe where the product becomes part of a larger feeling rather than just a functional demonstration. Because ultimately, nobody dreams about polymers or heat protection. People dream about identity. Confidence. Presence.

– So with Unbroken, we tried to create a campaign that feels a bit more like popular culture entertainment than classic beauty communication.

Except for what you’ve already mentioned, how have you aimed to do things slightly different compared to other hair brands’ campaigns?

– I think the biggest difference is that we approached the campaign more like entertainment and world-building rather than traditional beauty communication.

– As stated earlier, hair advertising today often follows the exact same formula: hyper-polished visuals, products floating in water, scientific claims, perfect hair in perfect lighting and a very functional narrative structure. Which makes sense, because credibility matters enormously in this category. But the side effect is that a lot of campaigns become interchangeable. You could remove the logo from many beauty campaigns today and struggle to tell which brand it belongs to.

– We were very conscious about this being a first step in a direction that avoids that. We started with tension, character and atmosphere. We wanted the campaign to feel slightly self-aware and a bit unpredictable. Something you would want to watch even if you didn’t care about haircare.

– That also influenced our casting. (Swedish hiphop artist) Silvana Imam wasn’t chosen because she fits into the traditional beauty framework. She was chosen because she brings identity, integrity, and emotional gravity the second she enters a frame.

– I think the future belongs to brands that understand the codes of the category, but aren’t afraid to play with them a little. Sometimes the most premium thing a brand can do is loosen its tie slightly.

Would you say it’s also about breaking certain stereotypes?

– I think ‘breaking stereotypes’ can sometimes become a dangerous ambition in itself. Audiences can immediately feel when a brand is trying too hard to appear disruptive. So for me, the goal is never to break them just for the sake of it. The goal was to create something with a stronger sense of personality, tension, and entertainment value than what we typically see in the category. Which in itself expands what the brand universe of Björn Axén can be.

– I think beauty as a category has historically taken itself very seriously. Perfection, aspiration, flawlessness. But culture today is much more self-aware than that. People respond to tension, personality, irony, imperfections, and point of view.

– You don’t need to scream that you’re different. Usually the most interesting brands are the ones confident enough to show a little self-awareness and let the audience discover the difference themselves, Brännén shares. He adds:

– Consumers today trust a TikTok-creator saying ‘I actually hated this at first,’ more than a million dollar campaign explaining product innovation.