Natural deodorant startup Fussy has had its wrist slapped by the ASA for spoofing Lynx on social media.
It posted an image of a fake deodorant product called ‘Mynx’ in green, red and black packaging to Instagram and LinkedIn in December with the caption: “£733m is wasted on unwanted gifts each year”.
Lynx owner Unilever argued the posts discredited or denigrated its products.
Fussy claimed their purpose was to ask their customers whether they should launch a new refillable deodorant product, called Mynx.
It was unable to provide specific evidence to back the claim £733m was wasted on unwanted gifts each year, but provided links to two articles that stated significant amounts of money were unnecessarily spent over the festive season.
It claimed the fictional Mynx product in the ads was not intended to allude to Lynx products, but acknowledged consumers may have interpreted it in that manner.
However, the advertising watchdog upheld the complaints made against both posts. It considered consumers would “immediately recognise that the font, the colour scheme and the design of the Mynx branding was almost identical to the branding for Lynx deodorant”.
Plus, it “considered the terms ‘unwanted gifts’ and ‘most unwanted’… to be pejorative comments which suggested Lynx products were of lower value and less desirable in comparison to its competitor products”.
For those reasons, it ruled that the posts “discredited and denigrated the Lynx brand” and warned the ads “must not appear again in the form complained of”.
“Hands up, sometimes we miss the mark, and for that we are truly sorry,” Fussy CEO Matt Kennedy told The Grocer. “We are pleased, though, that competitors follow us on social media.”
The Grocer has approached Lynx for comment.
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