The Men In Progress series of social videos feature dozens of guys talking candidly about being a man today. From the last time they cried, to how they feel about their body, to their relationship with their father.

Every perspective on modern masculinity was given an opportunity to be aired. From hating football, to being defined by it. From refusing to ever show emotion, to crying at musicals. From being obsessed with their looks, to paying no attention their looks. Whatever the topic, there was no script, no party-line and no particular moral being preached – other than to demonstrate that masculinity has never been more complex and contradictory than it is today.

Men In Progress took the form of 9 short social videos, seeded on social media. The series was fast-paced, digestible, and structured around episodic themes. The episodic format allowed us to release content at timely moments, when the topic being discussed felt the most pertinent. Guys discussing their relationships with their fathers, for example, was released on Father’s Day.

This wasn’t content that overtly fanfares it’s diversity. But to act as a barometer of masculinity we needed to feature men of every description. They were accompanied by some familiar faces from the worlds of sport and music, who were deliberately given exactly the same billing in the content as ‘regular’ guys.

Every episode - whether hilarious, heart-warming, or heart-breaking - was rooted in a raw authenticity unlike anything the brand had produced before. The stripped-back aesthetic of the films places attention squarely on the men, their opinions and their stories.

This radical new content approach is helping get the brand back into the cultural zeitgeist. 46% of men who viewed the series said it made the brand feel more relevant to them. Even amongst Lynx’s biggest sceptics, 25% said the brand felt more relevant to them after viewing.

The fact that the series has already achieved a purely organic reach of over 1.3 million, shows that the films have struck a real chord with young men. With a further 1.3 million paid views, and extensive earned PR coverage amounting to over 109 million impressions, Lynx reached a sizeable portion of its target audience in the UK with truly perception-changing messaging.

Crucially, the videos have engendered a real shift in how people talk about Lynx on social media. We are increasingly seeing this film content being used, unprompted, by people to moderate jokes about Lynx’s immaturity.

Men In Progress is a branded documentary film series that seeks to provoke its audience and challenge their thoughts about both the brand and modern men. The series covers the full spectrum of human emotions from the joy of becoming a father, to the despair at family bereavement. The presentation of real people with all their quirks and honesty makes for a entertaining and compelling series

We conducted a piece of research designed to help us understand the type of guy we should portray in Lynx content. What type of man would seem aspirational and relatable to modern young men?

We used an array of ads featuring various different types of men, from the talented, to the goofy, to the roguish, to the successful, to the caring and sensitive. We asked British guys which of these (a) they aspired to be like, and (b) they felt was relatable.

There was no consensus at all.

So we decided to abstain - to offer no vision of the aspirational man. It would be an impossible casting job.

Instead, we decided that the brand would simply act as a platform for normal men to talk about being a man. Lynx would stop having an ‘opinion’ at all, but instead just act as a barometer of how masculinity is changing.

Lynx (Axe) has always been a brand synonymous with young men.

But increasingly, guys were seeing it as a relic of 90s ‘lad culture’. In fact, our extensive social listening was suggesting that Lynx had become the butt of their jokes – a shorthand for immaturity and desperation. Having once been embedded in the cultural zeitgeist, in brand health scores it’s perceived “relevancy” to the target audience was plummeting.

The brief was simple, but open. How do we make Lynx ‘grow up’ and become culturally relevant with young men again?