The Lynx Effect fails to take hold

Ruth Mortimer is Marketing Week’s associate editor and a prolific blogger. She won a PPA Award for her forthright and insightful columns on marketing.

A Lynx ad has been banned after the ASA accepted complaints that the image, showing a woman with her bikini top undone, was degrading to women and unsuitable for kids.

I think the biggest problem with this ad is that it has none of the usual Lynx wit. The whole thing that Lynx has always done well is humour. Usually you are laughing as much at the men in the ad as anybody else. Remember the Lynx Pulse dancing ad? That showed a nerdy man getting the chicks by dancing, powered by his fragrance.

Or the Lynx Caveman, where plasticine figures in the stone age show how even Neanderthals can be improved by Lynx. Again, it’s pretty damn silly and thus not offensive.

So while I am not personally offended by the banned Lynx ad with its pouting beauty and her clothes falling off, I do think it fails to live up to the brand. Is it offensive? I don’t know. Does it fail to do anything for the Lynx brand? Yes. Which is reason enough to stop running it.

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