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Rexona turns up the smell and puts unsuspecting dates to the test

Is there anything worse than a blind date? What about a blind date with BO? Rexona plays cupid to test reactions to body odour and encourage people to think twice about their smell.

‘The Date’, produced by SparkPHD and a production team from MediaWorks, dramatises a real-life body odour anxiety moment and demonstrates why people shouldn’t leave BO to chance.

A staged speed-dating event was set up where two of the prospective dates, one male and one female, were actors doused with a BO fragrance. They were also connected to the directors through an earpiece and fed their lines, making them appear unaware of their smell. However, the non actors are completely aware of it and by the looks on their faces, they were not impressed.

All are seen subtly trying to cover their noses and turn away but no one has the courage to tell their perspective date that they smell. It’s not until the actors leave the room that talk of the BO begins. 

Spark PR & Activate head of content Mike Harland says ‘The Date’ demonstrated Kiwis are too nice in that they aren’t willing to tell people they have bad BO. However, they are willing to talk about a person and their bad BO behind their back.

“We felt like if we were able to showcase how people reacted to your body odour whether it be behind your back with other people then actually it might make you think twice about protection.”

The video has been shared on Facebook, YouTube and On Demand services, launching during The Bachelor wrap up. It has since been running during other dating shows like Married at First Site.

 Harland says the context of the experiment is fitting to both the dating shows and the female audience, though Rexona is targeting both males and females with the campaign.

This is not the first time dating has been used as a social experiment about to see how people react to the unexpected.

Simple Pickup had some interesting results with some arranged Tinder dates, for which one perspective date was made to appear bigger than their pictures.

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