Impulse

Impulse launched in South Africa in 1972 as a hybrid "perfume deodorant" — a fragranced body spray pitched between cologne and antiperspirant — and rolled into the UK in 1981 with a butterfly logo and the campaign line "Men can't help acting on Impulse." The product belonged to Fabergé and travelled with that company into the Unilever portfolio, where it has stayed. Through the eighties and nineties Impulse expanded across thirty-odd markets, ran a dedicated U.S. launch in 2002, and became a fixture of teenage and early-adult body-spray buying in much of Europe and the Commonwealth. Variants — O2, Tease, Hint of Musk, Spice Girls editions in 1997 — track the era's body-spray vocabulary closely. The brand's 1998 "Chance Encounter" advert, the first British and Irish television commercial to feature a gay couple, is now a footnote in advertising history.