Spykar collaborate with Scarecrow to prank India’s youth with ‘Blue Film Festival’

When Indian clothing company Spykar uploaded a mysterious trailer to YouTube entitled ‘Blue Film Festival’, featuring semi-naked models, a bed covered in underwear and salacious scenes rendered indecipherable by pixels, it immediately made waves online, with #BlueFilmFestival swiftly becoming the number one Twitter trend in India. When put in its cultural context this is hardly surprising – a ‘Blue film’ is the Indian terminology for a porn movie.

A link beneath the trailer sent the viewer to a website showcasing ten similarly ambiguous, pixelated clips. This site was viewed 40 million times over the course of a couple of days, as the mystery surrounding this strange move from this established brand snowballed. After 48 hours and with the public suitably captivated, the videos on the website were unpixelated, only to reveal innocuous clips of fashion models wearing the new Spykar ‘Blue’ collection.

This ingenious stunt was the brainchild of Indian creative agency Scarecrow, who sought to capitalise on Spykar’s ethos, which “firmly believes in youth being the core of the brand”, by beguiling what they called the “sex-obsessed” youth into believing that a clothing company were earnestly intent upon putting their established name to a pornography film festival. By addressing a taboo subject, a strategy most brands shirk from, Spykar enjoyed huge exposure from the ‘Blue Film Festival’, whether those who had been pranked were amused or not.

Article by Henry Gunn, MarComm News

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