Life on the Fourth Floor


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The Perpetually Increasing Weirdness of Lynx (or Axe) Adverts

Lynx and Axe Have Both Lost Their Way

Posted 13:30, 19th September 2005

Whilst I'm fully aware that this has nothing to do with anything, I'd like to comment on the latest range of Lynx deodorant adverts. You guys in the states will know the company as Axe but I know for a fact you get the same adverts a couple of months after us. I don't know why it's called Axe, though. Maybe it's because they thought you wouldn't know what a Lynx is. Still, a lynx is sexy and stylish... in a big cat kind of way. An axe, on the other hand, has no obvious sex appeal, unless you're a dwarf. But I digress. I don't know if anyone has seen these new 'Spray more get more' adverts on television recently. Something about them disturbed me to my core.

In the past, Lynx adverts have operated on the simple, if preposterous, principle that spraying it on your body will make you irresistible to the opposite sex, as if the very absence of smell is inherently attractive. Every advert has presented variations on this theme: if you spray it on you the women will think you're nice. How does it work? Magic. No further explanation is needed. Until now, that is.

The latest advert shows a guy spraying Lynx on some mud. Two passing women (I think they're horse-riding) smell the mud - yes, the mud - and feel the urge to wrestle together in this swill before inviting the guy to join them. The tag line reads as follows: spray more get more.

So, it doesn't just work by magic? There are rules? If you spray more on yourself, you get more women? What? The advert implies there is a scientific process at work, that a principle operates: the amount of Lynx sprayed is directly proportional to its effectiveness. Of course, there's more. It doesn't just work on humans. If you spray it on some mud, women will want to have sex with the mud. God, what happens when you spray it on other things like walls and mugs? But the women in the advert aren't just attracted to the mud, they acutally feel the urge to mud wrestle. How does the Lynx know? Are there special chemical receptors which detect what type of matter the spray has come into contact with and, based on this information, calculate what it can make women do that will most turn a guy on? Can't we go back to how things used to be?

Of course, the target audience for these adverts has always been desperate single men who can't get a date; men who don't think they're attractive to women. The adverts aim to convince these men that spraying Lynx on themselves will get them a date. And they offer nothing more than that promise because these men ask for nothing more. Now, however, these pathetic singletons are being told that by simply spraying the Lynx on their environment they can turn their world into an improv' porn film.

This is unfair and could lead to all sorts of trouble. Especially if someone sprays Lynx on the back end of a bus by mistake and unwittingly causes the deaths of the hundreds of women who run in front of traffic in an attempt to screw the exhaust pipe. These adverts need axing with a big, sexy axe.

And Two Days Later...

Posted 09:03, 21st September 2005

Update on the Lynx/Axe situation: a new advert in the 'Spray More Get More' range, in which a man sprays the Lynx on a penny and throws it into a fountain so that the woman who has become attracted to the penny runs in after it. This is madness. See for yourself here.

The Silent Chocolate Gimp

Posted 18:22 (GMT) 19th March 2008

Yeah, so this is going to be a big news post, to make up for my relative reticence in the past two weeks. There are a lot of links, most of them to Youtube. Like I always say, a Youtube link is soon a broken link so I've tried to write this so you don't have to follow all the links. But it'll be better if you do. Those Youtube videos say more than words ever could. That said, here are the words:

Today we're going to talk about that Lynx advert where the guy's made out of chocolate. Now, I think we've already touched upon the idea that there is a close relationship between sex and food. The two things seem to be linked in people's minds. I'm not saying one is a substitute for the other but they both release the same kind of endorphins and I can tell you first-hand that people are more likely to comfort eat if they aren't getting laid. Sometimes television shows use this association to their advantage. And sometimes the association pops up in adverts, like in the ridiculous but strangely successful Marks and Spencer's ads where food is described in a level of detail I can only describe as pornographic while porn music actually plays in the background just to prove my point.

The problem is, once the link has been drawn in your mind, you can never go back. Umm... sorry. You'll never be able to watch someone get into the zone with their sandwich quite the same way again. You won't be able to hear people's yummy noises without wondering how much they sound like their sex noises ever again. You're broken now, like me. You see, once you realise that things like cars and shampoo can be seen as sexy when in reality they have nothing to do with it, suddenly something like this seems loaded with sexual nuance. Freud would have had a field day with those phallic jalapeños. In the Subway advert the link is there but it's completely accidental, which is what makes it funny. But what do you do when you see an advert in which they've tried to make the food look delicious but also made some vague effort to make it sexy? What are we supposed to do with a burger made out of women? Once you know about the link, the Nigella Lawson link, suddenly adverts like that become creepy. Really creepy. I mean, I don't have to spell it out for you. I sort of have already but... I could talk about the different meanings of "eating" but... well it's creepy. And once you see why it's creepy, you've just opened Pandora's jar. How about this advert? He can unhinge his jaw, eh? God, that's creepy. On so many levels.

Imagine how creepy I found the advert for Lynx/Axe body spray in which the man is made out of chocolate. I've talked in the past how Lynx adverts have shot themselves in the foot by dicking about with the rules of their adverts. It used to operate on a basic Pied Piper level, like some Shakespearean love potion - spray this mess on your body and women will fancy you, the ads said. Yes, you have big ears. Yes, your hair doesn't quite lie down at the back. That won't matter - beautiful women will find you very attractive if you wear Lynx. Simple, almost endearing in a casually misogynistic kind of way. Now it's less simple. Now there are complex rules and harsh warnings, like in a movie about witchcraft. After the deodorant is long gone, the metal from the cans is still attractive. It works on inanimate objects. If you use too much beautiful women will swarm towards you in an unstoppable army and kill you.

It gets worse. In this new advert a skinny, pale young man sprays Lynx on his shirtless body and is instantly transformed into an inhuman chocolate person. His whole body is made out of chocolate. He's suddenly wearing a t-shirt for reasons I could not gather. His face, picked out in white chocolate, is fixed in this inane grin - a twisted grimace that would never appear on a human face. He's like some grotesque walking statue. Then, just in case you weren't already weirded out, he breaks off his nose. He breaks off his fucking nose. His stomach gets eaten, he loses his hand, a woman on the bus takes a bite out of his arse. Two women eat his ears in the cinema. All these body parts reappear in the next shot but by this point I don't care. I don't care if it grows back, it still looks like it hurts. At least it would hurt if he was, say, a human being and not a disturbing chocolate automaton with no soul, no mind, in fact nothing more than just a vaguely humanoid shape wandering around being gnawed on by strangers, perpetually smiling whilst those around him mutilate his body. The advert ends when he stops to wave at some women and a passing motorist breaks off his arm. At this point, he looks like he's trying to scream.

It's all rather scary. I can't blame them for trying to be imaginative, trying to shake things up. After all, there are a limited number of ways you can conventionally portray a magic body spray that makes one irresistible to the opposite sex. Let's be fair - the man made out of chocolate is a visual metaphor for how irresistible you can be whilst wearing Lynx. Women will be drawn to you, they will want to stick their tongues in your ears or bite your bottom. Fair enough. It's poorly executed to the point where it gives you nightmares but whatever. I'm with you up until that point, ad people. But I draw the line at breaking off noses and arms. That just doesn't make sense - it doesn't even fit this inferred subtext. If we translate that scenario to real life, it's saying that women will drive by you in their car and... think you're hot and... grab your arm and... break it off? What?

It's like they were sitting around the table. One guy (and you know these things are dreamt up by fervent, sweaty men) has just pitched his idea for the chocolate golem, the modern-day Pinocchio. Someone's just asked if it's possible to execute that concept visually without it looking deeply unnerving and they've been reassured that it can. Now they're throwing ideas out. What would happen if you were made out of chocolate? Somebody suggests the arse biting. Someone else thinks two women licking his ears in a cinema would be hot. Then another man, an awkward bespectacled man who hasn't said anything for the past hour suddenly says:

"Hey, if you were made out of chocolate women would drive past in an open top car and break your arm off."

In a sane world that man would have been fired. In our world, not only did they like the idea and use it in the advert, he probably got a promotion. Then he told everyone about his idea for a Subway ad in which giant vegetables threaten the customers in dark alleys. It makes you want to jump out of a two storey window. Maybe you'll die, maybe you'll just break several bones and the pain and misery of an extended hospital stay will distract you from the relentless stupidity of it all. Is it worth the risk? Probably not. Then again, remember the Burger King guy who could unhinge his jaw and swallow triple whoppers whole? That window's looking kind of tempting now, is it not?

Like I said before, food and sex are linked. On the basis that sex sells, they've used sex to sell food. I think this advert is the first (and hopefully the last) example of them using food to sell sex. And it gives me nightmares. But once your ad campaign has unleashed a man made out of confection on an unsuspecting (and undeserving) public, where can you go next? What could be weirder than that? Women smushing into each other in puffs of white smoke? I'd like to see that!

Sweat is Not a Dealbreaker

Posted 17:24 (GMT) 9th July 2008

It's been a while since I ranted about the frighteningly uncanny trends in modern advertising. Here's one: weird eyes. Actually, this isn't the first advert of its kind I've seen, I believe there was a Mastercard ad in the Americas in which a guy's eyes are looking in different directions, but it certainly is the freakiest.

For the benefit of those reading this in the future through magic four-dimensional telescopes (chronoscopes?) the advert shows a slightly dishevelled and unkempt-looking young man frollicking on the beach with a girl about four fathoms out of his league. He lays her down on the sand, she bites her lower lip - I think we can all guess what's going to happen next. Well we'd all be wrong. Instead of, you know, having sex with her our hero starts doing this weird thing where his eyes look in all different directions and the helpful voiceover tells us that

a) He's checking his armpits to see if they're sweating and

b) That he does this every time he sees a woman.

Oh-ho-ho! When will the archetype of the young man who becomes sweaty and nervous at the mere sight of a woman die? More importantly, who - I mean who - WHO proposed an advert for men's antiperspirant in which a man's eyes look in all different directions like someone's hit him in the back of the head too hard and now they're stuck that way? WHO?

I know who, I bet it was the same guy who dreamt up threatening sexual predator salad people for Subway and the same guy who thought of the ending to this advert. In my previous polemics I have described this man as awkward and bespectacled - he is the sum of all fears, the widowmaker: a man who has no understanding of human behaviour or what people find repellant and disgusting but who nevertheless has a highly-paid and influential job in advertising. How else can we explain these freakishly disturbing adverts, with a message that makes such little sense?

And yes, these adverts make no sense. I could forgive the hideous imagery if the point being made was a valid one.

I mean, just as Subway's promise of 'no surprises' is undermined by the knowledge that no fast food is surprising and the Lynx dark temptations' promise of chocolate-like irresistibility is undermined by the chocolate man's arm being broken off in the final seconds of the commercial, the anitperspirant's message that sweat is a dealbreaker in any sexual encounter is downright erroneous.

In fact, the advert itself seems to reflect this - the girl seems ready to fool around with our ill-kempt hero until he starts doing the weird eye thing. And then, rather than screaming, she just looks bitterly disappointed. Unless this is Schrodinger's sweat, which doesn't exist until it is observed, this perspiration hasn't suddenly come into being so ostensibly the look of disappointment isn't because the guy's sweating, it's because he's doing the weird eye thing. And isn't that always the case? Things look like they're going your way, then your partner strokes out.

So the advert's message seems to be that if you self-consciously check to see if you're sweating you can destroy the romance of a moment instantaneously. And until he checked, she looked like she didn't mind. Maybe she hadn't noticed the sweat-marks under his arms, maybe she had but she didn't care - either scenario is realistic.

Nobody cares about sweat. Sweat is not a dealbreaker. You know the number of times I have been in some sort of intimate or romantic situation and noticed sweat marks? About a dozen, over the five years or so I have been sexually active. Did I give a shit? Of course not! If you sweat so much that the Wicked Witch of the West could well be threatened by your underarm area perhaps that may give you cause for concern but otherwise just forget about it. Wash every day with soap, apply whatever potions and ointments you think will help prevent sweat and then forget about it. Because if you think sweat can come between two lovers I have some bad news for you - there is no product that can stop you from sweating altogether and if you engage in any strenuous physical activity you are going to sweat. And if sex requires no exertion on your part, if you just sort of lie there, you're doing it wrong.

What I'm saying is people who have sex sweat. It's a sweaty, messy, sometimes awkward, sometimes silly, intimate, stupid experience. If you're looking for 'perfect' sex in which soft incidental music starts playing as soon as you get going, nobody sweats, nobody misses a beat or does something embarrassing, both parties climax at the same time and the bedsheets perfectly cover men from the waist down and women from the neck down then you really are living in an advert and you should watch out for vegetable monsters and chocolate gimps.

Okay, forget the sex. In any relationship you should feel safe enough to be yourself, wear what you want and excrete the fluids you excrete without fear of rejection. Anyone who is so picky that they're not willing to overlook pit-stains is never going to find love.

And now we reach the part of the rant where I stop typing the first point that comes into my head, pour myself a second cup of tea and maybe re-read what I've already put and think about what I'm getting at. What I'm trying to say is this advert is not only frightening to behold but also insidious and unethical. It's a deliberate effort to undermine people's confidence about their own natural physicality, an attempt to engender nuerosis in our nation's youth. And if you encourage people who want to have sex with each other not to sweat you're really standing between them and hot, sweaty, tangled-bedsheets sex. And that, as we all know, is just plain wrong.

Sorry, I just realised you'll have to mouse-over the strip I just linked you to in order to appreciate the reference. Still, I think I've made my point.

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