Bom Chicka Wah Wah makes a big boom on and offline.

Two days ago, as I was reading the free newspaper on my morning commute I spotted a letter to the editor signed by "a grumpy old man" where he complained about the "sexual harassment toward men rampant in todays advertising" and more specifically the latest "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" Axe advertisements running on TV. "If I wear that scent women will rip my clothes off, no thank you I do not want such unwanted sexual attention from strangers" whined the old man and I smiled all the way to work thinking that the letter was placed by some clever Axe PR guru, designed to get a response much like trolls fish for naive people in forums. Yes, I'm cynical - and sure enough the next day there was a witty response from a woman telling the grumpy old man that the solution was quite easy, simply don't wear Axe, and donating him a penny for which he could buy himself a sense of humor. And so the letters page was sprinkled with Axe brand mentions two days in a row.

So where did this campaign come from, the Bom Chicka Wah Wah which is on every gals hips and every guys lips, and in the urban Dictionary? It's a joint creation from BBH New York and BBH London and all are shot by director Mike Maguire (formerly of Maguire and Kuntz). As always when something different is out there, a lot of credit needs to go to the client. After all, they had the balls to approve it and they're the ones who saw this as an opportunity to get into popular culture.

Both BBH New York and BBH London shared the work, William Gelner in NY headed it up with Rosy Arnold in London. The teams created print work, coined "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" and new York had the fun job of going to South America to actually shoot the spots.

"Basically, the spots were probably 98% performance based, and I'd say some of the funniest parts end up being written on the spot. We must have had 100 callbacks in NY, LA, and Sao Paolo looking for the right girls who knew how to sing it right (and axe call backs are always fun, so the more the merrier!)."

The commercials were shot with an all star team, the cinematographer was Bob Richardson, who's shot famous flick like the Doors, Natural Born Killers, JFK and Kill bill. The small details make them, in the supermarket it looks just like any old supermarket except the meat sections is suitably labeled "Carnes". The dentist office has a slight Stanley Kubrick-styling feel, and the odd English class could be anywhere in the world, really.

"Another funny thing is that there are a couple people we found online who actually think the phrase was invented relatively recently and that we just 'picked it up and used it.' While understandable to believe that ads borrow (ie; steal) all the time (so many do), the truth is even my older siblings used to sing music like that whenever something was slightly sexual, so it's been in the social ether. We just figured it was time someone defined it, so why not new Axe?

The part that really amazes me through are the amount of user-generated 'copies' of kids doing it. We thought if we would've needed to seed it more in order to get that result, but it really just snowballed and took off. Most of the comments are overall very positive, but funnily enough, one will say they love it and then another will say they hate it, which I guess, is the truth of our job."

A quick google and you'll find that people are actually talking about these ads everywhere, which just goes to show you that there is no need to seed when the idea is captivating enough. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sing "Bom Chicka Wah Wah" to my sexay man who just took a shower with some nicely scented stuff....