A cheeky ad campaign and a Facebook competition give body spray brand back its edge over rival Right Guard
According to YouGov's BrandIndex, a daily tracking tool which measures the public's perception of well-known brands, in recent months body spray brand Lynx had lost the edge it enjoyed over competitor Right Guard. However, a clever ad campaign for new product 'Lynx Attract' ‒ which capitalised in on a certain Royal’s Las Vegas antics ‒ along with a Facebook event promising island fun, has put Lynx back on top.
A look over the last eight months on BrandIndex shows that prior to the campaign, Lynx had lost the Buzz score lead it had over Right Guard, but has since won it back.
The chart below shows that Lynx enjoyed a sustained lead in Buzz over Right Guard between February and May. The lift in Buzz, back in February, coincided with the launch of the 'Lynx Attract' 'Breaking News' TV ad, crafted by marketing firm Razorfish. Since May, however, the brand appeared to be struggling to pull itself away from competitor Right Guard, whilst Dove remained a decisive six points ahead. However, in more recent days, Lynx has once again pulled ahead of Right Guard.
BrandIndex Buzz scores - Dove, Lynx and Right Guard
So what is Lynx doing to increase Buzz around its brand?
- An advert poking fun at Price Harry’s nude photo scandal on (which broke on Sunday, August 26th) for 'Lynx Attract'
Chatter about Prince Harry’s now-infamous nude photos hit the newsfeeds of Twitter users by Wednesday August 22nd.
The chart below shows the number of mentions heard by our 10,000-strong Twitter panel over the last 14 days. Using YouGov’s new social media analytics tool (SoMA), it is clear that The Sun’s decision to publish the photos was launched off the back of a story that seemed to be starting to fizzle.
On Friday, August 24th, 'mentions' heard about Prince Harry had nearly halved from their Wednesday high. The most frequent words associated with Prince Harry on the Friday included: “naked”, “vegas”, “sun”, “pictures”, “photos”, “royal”, “public interest” and “king”.
YouGov SoMA - Mentions of Prince Harry on Twitter
Lynx tried to capitalise on the Sun’s coverage of the Prince Harry scandal by releasing an advert for their new “Lynx Attract” product in the Sunday issue of the paper (August 26th) with the tagline = “Sorry Harry…if it had anything to do with us”.
This was clearly picked up by the newsfeeds of the Twitter population, as shown in the chart below. YouGov SoMA’s Reach scores show that on the day of the advert in the Sun on Sunday, Lynx reached 1.5% of Twitter with key words appearing with Lynx including “advert”, “today”, “Sun”, “great”, “Prince Harry”, “vegas” and “love”.
By Monday, Lynx’s Reach score had increased to 3% on Twitter, with frequent words again referencing the advert with “clever” also now included.
By Tuesday, August 28th, Lynx was reaching 5% of UK Twitter newsfeeds – 59% of which belonged to those aged between 18 and 34.
Interestingly, given that this is the first product Lynx has released that includes a version for women, during this three-day period those hearing mentions of Lynx on Twitter remained very gender-balanced. On average between 48 and 52% of those hearing about Lynx on Twitter were women.
YouGov SoMA and BrandIndex Reach and Buzz
- Launched the ‘Chaos Island’ event on Facebook
In addition, even if you hadn’t heard about Lynx’s offer of tickets to a three-day party on an actual island, labelled “Chaos Island on the event's official Facebook page – then one look at the relevant SoMA readings can tell you that something chaotic is afoot.
Most frequent words appearing on Facebook users private feeds together with Lynx include: “island”, “chaos”, “chasethechaos”, “win”, “tickets”, “Africa”, “effect”, “advert”, “smell” and “gel”.
But is Lynx’s campaign investment working? In the last four days (since 31 Aug), Lynx’s BrandIndex Buzz score has climbed by 4 points and has just overtaken Right Guard. Time will tell if this increase in Buzz will feed into an increase in their overall brand perception and convert to revenue growth for the brand.
BrandIndex full Index score - Dove, Lynx and Right Guard
