The Lynx Effect: on Dumb Horny Teenage Boys

How did a generation of boys buy that bullshit?

Way back when, Lynx - or Axe, for you Americans - convinced a generation of teenage boys that their acrid underarm protection was the key to attracting girls. The near-visible tang stunk out PE changing rooms the world over. Every manchild gave off the funk from a good foot away, like a detectable aura of sexual frustration. 

The creative types at Lynx didn’t bother with a marketing ploy. There wasn’t a sniff of cunning at work here. Advertising with all the subtlety of an ambush pitch from a hardened Magaluf club rep. They say the campaign can be traced back to a single company-defining brainstorm. After hours of deadlock, a maverick marketing guru dotted two central spots on a bare Venn Diagram. “Boobs,” he muttered, backing away, dumbfounded by his own genius, “Boobs.”

In case you didn’t have a telly, here’s the gist of every advert from ‘The Lynx Effect’ campaign. 

Enter: young actor comfortable enough with his gawkiness to audition for “Scruffy, Scrawny White Male #1”. A young chap that screams teenage despair in between involuntary warbles. With a frame that’s just a highly mistuned instrument of clumsiness - the outline of his ribs jutting out from a milk-white chest. A sometimes walking, sometimes talking, vehicle for untimely boners.

Next, a wasteful slash of Lynx from pit to pit, sets one of his least realistic fantasies in motion.

Instantly, he is set upon by a horde of fiercely aroused, local women. The mass hysteria brought on by Lynx only affected a pretty slim cross-section of female society. Nobody’s breathy old great-aunt is hobbling randily towards the target. Or maybe they are just in the second or third wave, bringing up the rear of the statuesque models. 

The artfully disguised message here: reek of Lynx and women will sex you - yes, even you. Although the adverts were tongue-in-cheek, that’s what they sold and that’s what teens bought. The logic bypassed their neurons and went to work on those baffling quantities of hormones. Targeting the kind of horniness that wouldn’t let a young lad get through this paragraph without fondling themselves to the phrase ‘tongue-in-cheek’. And again, over the “-tities” in quantities. Lead on by their sentient stiffies, teens bought Lynx in frustrated droves. 

It’s tough to enter the mindset of this defunct version of myself. A young man/old child so gullibly horny that this advertising was buyable. The vascular rubbish chute from brain to dong was probably a factor. Each advert must have triggered a rush of blood so dizzying that the Lynx Effect seemed legit. What else could explain it? Only an undersupplied brain could take that ad as a peer-reviewed study on female attraction. 

Of course, all advertising boils down to ‘buy thing for sex/happiness’. But, normally, there’s a bit of misdirection out of courtesy for the mark’s intelligence. A few subconscious hops between getting the weed killer and getting the girl. These stench-peddlers put the right amount of faith in boys’ developing brains. 

Like lemmings on heat, man-children got their mums to fork out the extra couple of quid for Lynx. Or made an out-of-character offer to help with the big shop - then snuck Unilever’s world-famous, splendiferous virginity-relieving elixir into the trolley.

In the miserable, pressurized footrace towards sex, Lynx positioned itself as an ally. As soon as some bumfluffed 11-and-a-half-year-old made an unsubstantiated claim he’d done it with this girl, but you wouldn’t know her, she’s in another school/country/ethereal plain - the race was on. 

It wasn’t worth not fumigating your pits with Lynx. Best to be sure. An aroma with all the subtle notes of bath-brewed hooch. Yep, this’ll do it. I’ll be batting them off. Artificial pheromones with names lifted straight from ropey erotic prose -“Pulse” and “Dark Temptation.” “This thick aroma will find me a parking space for my free-wheeling sex drive,” he pulsed, lustily.

Desperation, by Lynx, was the signature scent of the bumpy passage to manhood. As much a part of boyhood as snatching a comparative glance at some crumpled old bollocks - or gradually increasing the surface area of your underwear. “Geez, mum. No more Y-fronts, OK?!” 

Lynx’s advertising has really changed things up. They’ve catapulted their projection of masculinity forward a century or so, with not a scantily clad model in sight. 

Picture the sheer panic in the Lynx marketing department when their demographic grew up and stopped basketing their bullshit. It’s comforting to think of them solemnly binning their racy calendar/mood board. 

But it sure was effective. Even now, as an adult, I can’t shake the faint supermarket reflex, telling me to buy Lynx or die alone.