2021 Social & Influencer

LYNXMAS, SMELL READY FOR CHRISTMAS

TitleLYNXMAS, SMELL READY FOR CHRISTMAS
BrandUNILEVER
Product/ServiceLYNX AFRICA
Category A01. Consumer Goods
Entrant OLIVER London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation OLIVER London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Rod Sobral OLIVER / U-Studio Global Chief Creative Officer
Chloe McCloskey OLIVER / U-Studio Global Head of Content and Community
Jonathan Day OLIVER / U-Studio Copywriter
Joe Fletcher OLIVER / U-Studio Creative Copy Director
Milan Desai OLIVER / U-Studio Creative Copy Director
Ed Edwards Ed Edwards Creative Director
Gavin Langley OLIVER / U-Studio Creative Director
Ed Calderhead OLIVER / U-Studio Senior Content & Community
Alex Varela OLIVER / U-Studio Head of Design
Alex House OLIVER / U-Studio Head of Design
Gemma Poesaste OLIVER / U-Studio Group Account Director
Jonny Collin OLIVER / U-Studio Account Director
Stephanie Hernandez OLIVER / U-Studio Account Director
Andy Gulliman Andy Gulliman Executive Producer
Lewis Galloway OLIVER / U-Studio Global Strategy Director

Why is this work relevant for Social & Influencer?

It’s no secret that Lynx Africa – specifically Lynx Africa gift sets – are synonymous with Christmas. In fact, on Christmas day, only #Christmas and #MerryXmas organically trend higher, with Lynx Africa mentioned 13,000+ times on Christmas Day alone. And, with 2020 marking the iconic fragrance’s 25th anniversary, it made sense that Christmas was when Lynx would throw a birthday party like no other. With the UK under a fresh Covid-19 lockdown, social media (with 46% of 18-34s actively posting), and influencers such as Calfreezy, were the building blocks we used to invite Gen Z guys nationwide.

Background

Having celebrated its 25th birthday with the Hot Since ‘95 campaign that launched in April, our next task was to tap into the Christmas conversations about Lynx Africa gift sets to increase value share and volume share – and overall penetration – of the male deodorants market. Whilst Lynx was the market leader in all three metrics, there'd been a marked decline in the volume of Gen Z guys using Lynx deodorants once a day – falling from 24.2% in 2015 to 17.7% in 2019. Whilst moving away from The Lynx Effect had positioned the brand as more modern, grown-up and inclusive, it had lost the brand’s distinctive wit and diluted the previously strong product benefit message – it helps you smell great. We faced a significant marketing challenge: Increase market share and penetration by getting Gen Z guys to care about smelling great - and turning to Lynx

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

We started with Lynx’s core benefit: smelling great. The power of fragrance to trigger memories is widely accepted within the scientific community and wider society. In fact, your sense of smell is thought to have a stronger connection to memory than even sight. However, saying “it’s my birthday, we should celebrate the past 25 years” would have been talking to ourselves. We first re-launched our 30” TVC in the build up to Christmas, adapted to feature subtly festive characters and ‘Easter eggs’, during shared festive viewing moments, with social listening helping Community Managers identify and respond to the resulting trends, memes, and mentions as they happened. Our pre-existing campaign name – HOT SINCE ’95 – that allowed us to time travel at our leisure, revisit the trends and gifts of Christmas past, and place them in direct opposition to the enduring popularity of Lynx Africa gift sets.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

By 2019, 56% of Gen Z admitted to feeling anxious or stressed most or all of the time. The chance to look back to times when things were more fun, the opportunities in front of them were more appealing, and attraction was something they were free to explore and enjoy would be something young guys would relish. There is no time of year more replete with nostalgia than Christmas, and, with a resurgence of ‘90s trends, in both social media and wider culture, the past was more relevant than ever before. That made revisiting and embracing the trends and gifts of Christmas past a natural starting point. We had to ensure Lynx Africa was given starring role in our community’s conversations whilst introducing a healthy dose of Gen Z’s progressiveness, energy, and humour. Our strategic idea: Lynx Africa isn’t just a fragrance, it’s a time machine.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

As media outlets such as The Metro wondered how Lynx Africa felt about becoming a Christmas meme, we played up to the role by launching the LOL (Lack of Lynx) Hotline, influencer Calfreezy hand-delivering emergency Lynx Africa gift sets to guys who had missed out. With Lynx the only brand actively tweeting come the day itself, social listening again proved crucial, allowing our Community Managers to react to live trends and conversations with a bespoke set of GIFs and stickers. After an image featuring a Lynx Africa gift set with some NSFW sex toys prominent in the background surfaced, a combination of ironic copy and just-enough censorship set feeds ablaze. Christmas Day launched Lynx’s ‘Admin’ persona. Bringing to life and humanising the brand in the process, the more personal interactions our ‘Admin’ had with the user audience delivered 48,000 engagements and a 15% engagement rate.

List the results (30% of vote)

In what was Lynx’s highest-performing December EVER, we delivered 42 million total impressions – 4.2 million (+349% YoY) of them organic – 219,400 organic engagements (+776% YoY) and 13,000 organic brand mentions. #LynxAfrica was organically trending in Twitter’s Top 3 for over 8 hours on the day, whilst the Lack of Lynx Hotline sold out within 30 minutes. The gift set and sex toy re-post alone delivered 33,400+ organic impressions (against a Lynx average of 6,100) and an organic engagement rate of 22% (against a 0.7% average), with our bespoke GIFs receiving over 30 million views. The result? Lynx’s value share increased to 13.1% (+240 basis points), unit share increased to 10.2% (+200bps) and penetration increased to 11.6% (+100bps). Lynx Africa gift sets achieved a 48% share of the Gifting category in December (+516 basis points YoY). All whilst the male deodorants category was in double-digit decline.