Lynx have always walked the line with their sexy advertising campaigns, and the prudes of the world have decided that they went too far with their raunchy campaign featuring model Lucy Pinder. The Advertising Standards Authority decided that the internet based adverts and on poster were guilty of a number of offenses including objectifying women and would cause widespread offence.
The internet campaign, which saw the glamour model washing cars and jogging in a bikini were looked into when the ASA received a number of complaints that the adverts were offensive, degrading and were on websites that could easily be seen by children. So a bit like Baywatch, then?
The poster for the product, which did not feature Pinder, showed a woman under a shower with the tag line, The cleaner you are, the dirtier you get, and tied into a tv campaign with the same tag. A spokesman for Lynx said, “Lynx adverts often provoke diverse reactions and opinions but it is never out intention to cause offense.”To be honest, is this any worse that the VTs run in I’m a Celebrity of models under a jungle shower, or the aforementioned tea-time slot that Baywatch used to occupy? Or even the storylines of the soaps? Not really. It’s maybe just about time Britain got a grip of it’s priorities and concentrated on things that really matter instead of complaining about adverts.