Unilever flies with Top Gun Lynx ad

Unilever is launching a Top Gun inspired advertising campaign to support its first Lynx product for sensitive skin.

Top Gun Lynx ad

The TV ad is part of a £4m marketing campaign to support the Lynx Dry+ Sensitive range. Ads will run across TV, Video On Demand services, cinema and outdoor. The campaign also includes digital, in-store, sampling and PR activity.

The ad aims to show the importance of using products to avoid sensitive skin irritation and features two pilots getting ready to take flight. One of them scratches his sensitive underarm before plummeting head first into the sea.

Lynx says the ad “echoes the competitiveness of the mating game” and features an “obligatory beautiful woman as the prize”.

Unilever says the Lynx brand is worth £116m in the male grooming category. Lynx launched the anti-irritation range after consumer research revealed that 57% of men suffer from sensitive underarm skin that reacts badly to normal deodorants.

The TV ads break on 12 July.

Louise Brunt, senior male toiletries category manager at Unilever UK, says: “We are extremely confident that the new advertising will appeal to our target Lynx male audience in a fun way, as well as making consumers aware of the product benefits. We expect the campaign to keep Lynx Dry+ Sensitive at the front of consumers’ minds and increase shopper demand for the product.”

Rival male grooming brand Gillette, owned by Procter & Gamble, launched a campaign starring Wimbledon champion Roger Federer to mark its accreditation by the British Skincare Foundation.

To make the start of the World Cup, Lynx launched an England inspired outdoor camapaign.