Flite footwears succumbs to trolling, pulls down its Holi campaign

Exercising its creativity with the intent to woo the audience with a social message on Holi backfired for footwear brand Relaxo Footwears’s product Flite. The brand had to take down the campaign from the internet after the audience across social media platforms called it out and alleged it was in poor taste.

The video had received around one lakh views on Instagram and approximately two lakhs views on YouTube by the time it had been unpublished.

The campaign talks about consent while playing Holi, as not many people are comfortable around colours being applied to them. The tagline says – ‘Holi Khushiyon ka tyohar hai, zabardasti ka nahi’.

Audience took a dig at the brand pointing out why certain Hindu festivals are targeted for social messaging whereas certain festivals are not.

People and agencies associated with the campaign were asked to take down the video even from their handles. Many actors in the video were tagged in comments and trolled mercilessly. #boycottflite was the hashtag being used by the disgruntled audience across platforms.

The video was produced by Airvision Advertising, a production house based in Mumbai. The campaign was conceptualised and executed by L&K Saatchi & Saatchi.

Although it is to be noticed that back in 2017, detergent brand Ghadi had made an ad campaign on similar lines, which was praised by the audiences and was received well.