The RUBBER BARON

It has been said that condoms share marketing characteristics with napalm and funerals. But it is Ben Wilson's mission to make them sexy.

- Sophie Elmhirst

IT IS IMPORTANT TO BEN WILSON, the man incharge of the condom brand Durex, that he chews the condoms he sells. He likes to consider their flavour, to know the sensory experience of a customer engaged in oral sex, and to think about how it could be bettered. He makes other people sample them, too. In a car on the way to the Durex condom factory on the outskirts of Bangkok, he told me about the time he had laid out rows of bananas and condoms for a gathering of senior executives at Reckitt, Durex's parent company. "I said: 'If you want to work on condoms you need to put a condom on that banana and taste it.'" 

Freshly promoted, Wilson is Reckitt's global category director for intimate wellness, overseeing all the company's sex-related products, including Durex condoms, lubes and toys. Sandy-haired, rosy-cheeked, nearing 50, he has a kind of renegade energy, consciously uncorporate. He spikes his hair, never wears a suit and zones out to DJs Paul van Dyk and David Guetta while travelling. He practises for his fortnightly DJ lessons for up to 12 hours a week in a specially designated room in his house on the south coast of England, where he lives with his wife and two children. (Wilson's retirement plan is fully formed: a second home in Ibiza, already bought. He would die happy, he told me, if he could play a set at the EDM festival Tomorrowland.)