To hype up and coming Chinese luxury brand Qeelin, ad agency Fred & Farid pulled the wool over the eyes of millions of Chinese buy tricking them into thinking the mythological creature, the Qilin, actually existed.
The agency photoshopped a puppet baby Qilin into ancient Chinese photos as well as into a video. They then released the photos and video to influential social media types on the Chinese social media sites Weibo and WeChat.
In less than 24 hours, as if ushering lemmings off a cliff, the stunt became the hot topic on Weibo with 30,000 reposts and 15,000 comments.
After four days — and 35 million views — during which internet sleuths unearthed un-altered versions of the ancient photos, it was revealed Qeelin was behind the hysteria. Yet another example of how any of us can be led off a cliff and think nothing of it.
