A tent on campus that advertised men’s hygiene products became encircled by chanting protesters who objected to the portrayal of women in a promotional video game on Tuesday.
The Mojo Master Tour is designed to promote AXE’s newest fragrance, Unlimited. The company’s main promotional tool is the video game “Mojo Master,” a “game of seduction” in which a male character using AXE products travels to various settings, such as movie theaters and bars, attempting to get female characters’ phone numbers, according to the game’s Web site.
The University was the fourth-to-last stop on a nationwide tour of 25 universities. Most of the universities on the tour were selected because they had strong football teams, Mojo Master Tour manager Nick Ferrara said.
At the University, several organizations staged a rally, march and signature drive against the campaign.
“The heavy majority has been a positive reaction,” Ferrara said. “We hadn’t had any visible demonstrations as far as this one.” “Pretty much all I can say is nothing like this ever happened before,” Ferrara later said.
“Mojo Master” has 100 female characters with different combinations of five personality types. There is Light Girl, the “cute girl with a flower in her hair”; Ice Girl, the professional and strictly business type; Shadow Girl, who wears black and likes punk music; Fire Girl, who is a flamboyant daredevil; and Earth Girl, “the girl that would probably wear hemp clothes and eat organic food,” Ferrara said.
The male player and the female character each have a “Mojo Meter,” and the goal is for the player to lower the female character’s meter by matching physical and mental pick-up techniques to the female character’s type. The goal is to lower it before she lowers the male character’s meter.
Ferrara said the game was created for AXE by WildTangent, a Seattle-based software company.
“They created it just as a different way of marketing, you know, a different way of marketing a new product,” Ferrara said.

Ferrara said not very many students stopped by to play the video game.
“Compared to other campuses, it’s been a lot slower, but I don’t think we’ve ever been in this cold weather, either,” Ferrara said.
Campus organizations such as the ASUO Women’s Center, the University of Oregon Men’s Center, Alliance for Sexual Assault Prevention and Sexual Wellness Advocacy Team heard about the promotion in advance and organized a protest, which began with a picket line and signature drive and culminated in a loud rally.
“We are here to promote healthy and respectful relationships, and really not support the rape culture and misogyny inherent in this video game,” counseling psychology doctoral student Amit Shahane said, as he distributed pamphlets for the Men’s Center.
“We feel that it portrays sexism in that all women are highly sexualized and objectified,” said sophomore women’s and gender studies major Heather North, a SWAT intern. “We feel that their presence should not be here on campus.”
Some protesters said they spoke directly to the tour’s personnel.
“I asked them if they had a game in which I could pick up on men and they said they hadn’t developed that yet,” senior advertising major Diana Erskine said.
Eugene resident Paula Jones said she asked the tour manager if he had any children and whether he would want his daughters attending a school where date rape was encouraged.
“They just kept saying, ‘I respect what you have to say and we will report back to AXE,’” Jones said.
Signs with slogans such as “F*ck the white, patriarchal, heterosexist, capitalist PARADIGM” and “My body is NOT a game! ‘Mojo Master’ is lame” were carried at 1:30 p.m., as more than 20 protesters marched back and forth between the tent outside the EMU Ticket Office and the corner of East 13th Avenue and University Street.
Three game players scurried out of the tent as the protesters returned from the march to yell phrases such as “Hey hey! Ho ho! Mojo Master has got to go!”
The tour prepared to leave campus at 2 p.m. Some protesters took credit for the early departure, because the tour was originally scheduled to remain on campus from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., but Scheduling and Event Services Coordinator Amy Johnson said AXE called her office late Monday afternoon to change its departure time to 2 p.m.
“We knew there would be things that some might find controversial,” Johnson said.
University Scheduling Manager Jessi Steward said the scheduling office strives to be content-neutral when scheduling events and allowing vendors to rent space on campus, and that the scheduling office worked closely with both AXE and the protesters.

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