"Hot Since '95"

10 May 2020

60s

To smell and back.

There’s more than a whiff of nostalgia to this Lynx commercial, which celebrates twenty-five years of the brand’s Africa body spray. Scored by Apache Indian’s ‘Boom Shack-A-Lak’, the ad brims with hormones and Nineties iconography as the curtain-haired protagonist travels from 1995 to the present day. The lengths teens will go to for a shag, eh?

His quantum leap is peppered with references to cultural touchstones like Pokémon, Madchester and Euro 96, before a brief history of the Noughties and twenty-tens shows how the brand has changed tack over the years. Note the cursory nod to same-sex relationships.

Nothing’s to be taken too seriously however - Apache Indian featured on the ‘Dumb & Dumber’ soundtrack after all. Instead, the brand give Alan Partridge’s favourite scent a gaudy, affectionate tribute… just as many viewers long for simpler times.

UK

Deodorants / Anti-Perspirants