Lynx Space Academy

Space is all the rage these days and Lynx (Axe in the US) is getting into the act by sending people into space.  As part of the massive multi-agency campaign Lynx is recruiting males from across the world to take part in the contest.  There will be 22 winners, with the campaign running in 77 countries around the world.  The semi-finalists will head off to Space Camp and the lucky winners fly up to 103km with the space tourism company, Space XC.  They also enlisted legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin for the initial promo video (see below.)


The campaign lives on YouTube, Facebook and a separate Lynx Apollo campaign site.  Lynx has also created a series of videos to promote the campaign.  The general insight seems to be that nothing beats an astronaut.  The videos show astronauts effortlessly pulling ladies left, right and center (see below).  It'll be interesting to see how much of a boost/halo effect this campaign gets from the success of the Red Bull Stratos project.  To be fair this campaign was in development long before the Felix Baumgartner jump, but the buzz generated by Red Bull can only help to amplify the Lynx effort.

The Friskies

Everyone knows cat videos are huge.  Hell, there are even agencies dedicated purely to catvertising ;-)  So it's not surprise that Friskies has tapped into this infinite well of content and appetite for cat videos by creating...The Friskies!  Billed as the Oscars for Cat Videos, the Friskies is offering a $15,000 Grand Prize for the best new cat video of 2012.  Here's the teaser video:
The only question is why it's taken this long for a brand to do this.  It's extremely fertile ground and a natural fit for Petcare brands.  Actually, I'm also confused as to why the contest isn't being run on YouTube, which again would seem like the natural home for this contest rather than a microsite.

Additional Articles: Fast Company