There's a faintly disturbing advert on at the moment for Lynx deodorant, which features a streetwise chap like myself walking through a bland-looking city on a sunny day (clearly not Edinburgh - we had sun, rain and snow today). Trouble is, all around him women are charging full tilt into each other and erupting in powdery explosions like when the aliens zapped people in the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds remake. I'm not even sure if he notices, as he's intent on getting where he's needed - but each time two women explode into each other, a single more beautiful one emerges (i.e. one with more makeup and shorter dress). It's all because he sprayed the magic Lynx beforehand - or rather two of them.
This genius piece of marketing has it that we now have to buy two different flavours of their product in order to mix them to make a third 'fragrance'. Lynx 3 - One Guy, Two Cans, Loads of Women (apparently) is the new campaign from the Unilever concern, and of course has it's own predictably Flash-heavy website. The 'Bom chika wah wah' series have had their day, I guess because you only needed one can to achieve that effect, not two. The website has a series of Cocktail-esque barman tricks using cans of deodorant (second unintentional Tom Cruise reference), and Peter Crouch's squeeze, Abigail Clancy.*
But would you need to buy two of them to make a third fragrance? And would you want to? And have you any idea what I'm talking about? (Lynx is only so-called in the UK, Australia and New Zealand - everywere else it's Axe). I bet you didn't know it was launched as a male version of Impulse in 1983, and couldn't be called Axe in the UK because of copyright infringement. I'm not sure how it's supposed to work - do you squirt one under each armpit? Or just blast a double cloud and run through it? The website video has Abigail almost falling over with ecstasy as the Lynx man squirts each wrist and rubs them together, like he's testing stuff out in Boots. If you rubbed your underarms together you'd turn yourself inside out.
Why stop at Lynx? You might as well mix things up to achieve your own unique fragrance. Unilever also manufacture Domestos and Cif (which I think used to be Jif) - you could make a roll-on out of that. Or Chicken Tonight and Marmite? That would have the women running in the streets, I can tell you. Cup a Soup and I can't believe it's not butter? That would have a great name, if nothing else. Lynx can come up with some wacky flavours themselves, they released a chocolate flavoured deodorant last year - the advert for which features the tremendous 'Sweet Touch of Love' by Alain Toussaint.
I wonder what Crouchy uses?
* Britain's Sexiest Scouser, according to FHM (Abigail Clancy, that is. And yes that's her at the top there)
