I love ads that are built to shock you. Wild's new commercial does exactly that, with a play on language that sits right on the borderline of acceptable — and the bleeping out with the logo is what makes it land.

Natural deodorant has a problem it doesn't advertise. Most of it doesn't work well enough, and everyone who's ever switched knows it — the mid-afternoon doubts, the hot and sweaty work meetings, the slow realisation that being better for the planet came at a humid cost you're currently wearing.

The category has never really acknowledged the issue. They talk about refillable cases, clean scents, bio credentials, hoping the buyer doesn't notice they're being sold something other than what they were actually looking for: a deodorant that works.

Wild noticed.

The ad is set in a pitch meeting where a group of creatives and a nun are workshopping how to sell it. Most of the room hedges, the nun doesn't. She says the thing nobody wanted to say, the bleep follows, and the brand logo lands exactly where the word was. The censor becomes the signature.

Four words we won't repeat here, and won't need to, because you already have them lodged somewhere in your neocortex. The joke is the product claim. You can't remember one without the other. That's the insight.

But there's something underneath the craft. Wild is so unbothered by the category's reputation problem that they put their own name on the line, in service of humour and memorability. The co-founder acknowledged it himself: "Each time I post one of these, I always feel like there's a good chance I might get cancelled (or excommunicated in this case?)."

Dollar Shave Club did this in 2012. "Our blades are f***ing great" launched a company that sold for a billion dollars. The swearing wasn't the point. The refusal to be dishonest in a category built on dishonesty was. The language was just what that refusal sounded like out loud.

Wild found their version. The rest of the category is still figuring out how to say it without risking too much.