The initiative was for the launch of men’s deodorant New Axe, which targets men aged 13 to 35 years old with the proposition ‘New Axe gets you more than before’.
Incumbent BBH Asia-Pacific created Silky Kumar, a flamboyant, talentless singer with cheesy dance moves and a constant entourage of beautiful women. Silky debuted in India as MTV’s ‘buzzworthy artist of the month’, and sustained hype through non-branded music videos, behind-the-scenes vignettes and fake footage from Silky’s Asian tour.
The ‘star’ was interviewed in a Times of India profile and graced viral footage available through YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Orkut.
But the secret to his apparent sex appeal was revealed at the end of the month-long campaign. MTV aired a breaking news bulletin that exposed Silky Kumar as a Unilever employee, Papu Silky Kumar, who had snuck into the Axe laboratory to spray on the New Axe scent.
The bulletin features highlights from a fake Unilever press conference, at which a concerned spokesperson explained and apologised for the employee’s behaviour with a statement: “Spokespersons for Axe do not condone the use of New Axe formula body spray to become an international pop sensation.”
According to Jacob Wright, engagement planning director for BBH, the campaign has stirred consumer debate in blogs and chat forums over whether Axe was behind the fake star. “Creating a popstar from scratch was an ambitious task, but it allowed us to engage a range of traditional and social media channels in new ways,” said Wright. “We hope to do many more of these client-agency-media owner partnerships in future.”
This is the second major collaboration between Hindustan Unilever and MTV. Earlier this year, the two aired another fake music video, for Lux shampoo.
