Campaign Review: Why I like Lynx Excite

A piece of creativity I admire is the Grand Prix, Cannes Lions award winning work for creative-effectiveness of BBH, for Unilever’s brand, Lynx Excite. The campaign entitled “Even Angels Will Fall” depicts a picturesque fantasy scene of celestial creatures plummeting from the heavens in the hunt of the Lynx Excite scent and its wearer.

I believe the brief was to follow on the trend of recruiting young advocates to the brand via social network channels. Additionally, to reignite fallen sales through better alignment of the brand variant to the 11-16 target audience than previous campaigns.

Regarding the success of the campaign, the figures seem impressive; 80,000 Facebook fans, 25,000 likes and 100,000 YouTube video views (source) and a resulting spin off campaign, “Even Goddesses Will Fall”. However, I feel that measuring sentiment on the social platforms is imperative to give the quantifiable figures some context. 

I like this campaign in particular because of TMW’s creative work on social. They directly addressed the importance to personalise communications, which the agency terms “Intelligent Influence” through augmented reality and interactive social media adverts. I particularly like the inclusion of Google Maps, tailoring the visuals and the ability for participants to upload a picture of themselves to be included in the advert.

Moreover, this sophisticated approach to Lynx’s advertising, portraying women as angels rather than ‘sex objects’, tackled the view of Unilever having a schizophrenic brand portfolio. The key example being Dove, which embodies “building self-esteem “and “protecting your daughter” (Dove.co.uk, 2012) of which Lynx seemed to oppose. However, the brand is still sold on ‘sex appeal’ through the social network advertisements but in a much subtler fashion. Furthermore, due to the rising trend of simultaneous media use, I feel an IMC approach was central to the success of this campaign for increased engagement. 

Did you like this campaign? Or do you in fact hate it? Please let me know your thoughts and as always reach out to me on Twitter @nickwilliamgale