Guerrilla Marketing? Uniqlo Sex Tape Goes Viral

A viral video of a couple having sex in a fitting room at Japanese clothing retail store Uniqlo has been ripping through Chinese social media channels today with total and utter reckless abandon.

The graphic minute-long video was filmed selfie-style on an iPhone at a famous Uniqlo flagship store in Beijing’s Sanlitun district. Other than its’ graphic nature, the prominent featuring of Uniqlo’s intercom announcement in the background may be attributable for the video’s virality.

Noting the obviousness of the intercom announcement in the video as well as the the blatant mention of fitting rooms, an astounding number of WeChat and Weibo users are claiming that the video is a guerrilla marketing effort by the Uniqlo. Was this couple merely taking a video for future reference, or was it indeed a perverted social media marketing stunt devised by Uniqlo?

Seeing as we don’t tend to promote conspiracy theories at Mailman, we’re inclined to believe the former. Regardless, the video has had an astounding affect on Uniqlo’s visibility and keyword search results relevance. As of 3:00 AM this morning, Weibo’s top ten searches were all related to the Uniqlo incident, most including the name-brand “Uniqlo” in some way. Weibo saw a total of over three million searches for these keywords overnight. The incident has even brought Uniqlo’s competitor Zara into the top twenty board of Weibo searches.

All conspiracy theories aside, this particular Uniqlo does have a history of being political ground-zero for Sino-Japanese relations. The store was the site of anti-Japanese protests in 2012 at the height of the Senkaku-Diaoyu island dispute. Furthermore, with a retracting domestic economy in Japan and a very small market share in the USA, Uniqlo depends heavily on the Chinese market for their growth plan. Police are currently investigating the incident, if there is any back story to this viral video, we should know sooner or later.