Not-so-subtle campaign tells Asia: you smell

You might think twice before telling a friend, and you would bite your lip rather than mention it to your boss, but one soap company has no qualms about telling 3 billion Asians that they need to use a deodorant.

Unilever is preparing to confront the issue head-on with a marketing and advertising push directed at a new Asian generation.

Russell Taylor, global vice-president for Axe, the Unilever-made deodorant marketed as Lynx in Britain, said that no one had yet found a way of making Asians self-conscious about body odour. “Asia is a market we have never really cracked. They don’t think they smell, but people everywhere smell,” he said.

He said that the region was a billion-pound opportunity – “the last empty space on the map”. He estimated that only 7 per cent of Asians used a deodorant, with consumption in India virtually nil, and his team is dreaming up advertisements that will induce shame about sweat stains and odour across the region.

Mr Taylor said that deodorants were a relatively recent phenomenon, even in Britain: “Before the Second World War we didn’t use deodorant.” Britain in the Sixties was a remarkably smelly place – a land of sweat, wet wool, occasional bathing and shiny suits – and it took upfront advertising to educate a generation of Britons about body odour. “The sense of paranoia created the market.”

The trick is to tailor that paranoia to local sensitivities.To the company’s relief, risque British humour works well among young Indian men and Unilever is using its Lynx advertisements to good effect, but even so, it has to be careful. “We tailor some of the media to private channels [such as mobile phones] so young guys are not subjected to watching things in front of their families,” Mr Taylor said.