BBH’s Lynx Campaign, by Patrick Collister, Creative Matters
At the centre of every teenager’s life is their mobile phone so it is unsurprising that adland has been exploring new ways of using the phone as an advertising platform.
The trouble is, most mobile-based marketing has been creatively uninspiring. Until now.
BBH’s new campaign for Lynx is a brilliant example of how to use the mobile phone to create and share brand experiences.
The premise is, a lot of lads need help chatting up girls and Lynx can help them. The new website offers a series of helpful hints with videos of guys demonstrating each.
So, one clip demonstrates ‘The Sympathy Fall’. Guy sees girl. Guy walks into lamp-post, tree, any available solid object. Ouch. Girl is sympathetic. Guy explains he was dazzled by her beauty. She gives phone number. Thank you Lynx.
Key to the site are the free apps you can download. My favourite is the ‘Fit Girl Finder’. It turns your phone into a Geiger counter.
Using the keys on the handset, you can make it click energetically as you point it towards a girl or click falteringly when you point it at the old geezer in the corner. Obviously, she’s hot and he’s not. And that gives you the opportunity to, well, get in there.
The harmonica app makes it look as if you’re playing your phone or there’s the spray sound effect. Waft your mobile under your arms, between your legs etc, and it sounds as if you’re getting yourself Lynxed up.
Silly, but it starts a conversation. At least, it did for BBH’s Head of Mobile, Peter Sells, when he tried it in a Soho restaurant.
Did he pull? He would not say.
This is a great example of the agency redefining Lynx users not as ‘targets’ to aim messages at but as potential participants in the life of the brand. Terrific.
