The Campaign

One really had to search hard to find the streets where India’s street culture existed. So we decided to make the street easy to find. By creating our own street. Or gully, as it’s called in Hindi. We called it Suede Gully. A collaboration between Divine and his friends from all walk of street culture – rappers, dance crews, graffiti artists, visual artists, street fashion gurus. Together they created India’s biggest street collaboration across 4 cities and 4 languages. A collaboration that spoke about the struggles that the street culture goes through to express it. A thought captured in the words “Mere joote mein tu chal ke toh dekh” or “Try walking in my shoes”

Creative Execution

Suede Gully, India’s largest street collaboration, was launched through a 3.5 minutes long music video. It featured 7 street artists, 8 rappers and 36 dancers from across India, led by underground rapper Divine. It was shot across gullies in four cities (Mumbai in west, Madurai in south, Shillong in east and Delhi in north) and in four different languages representing the four corners of India (English, Tamil, Khasi and Hindi). The core idea of establishing and celebrating India’s street culture was delivered through lyrics rapped by Divine in the music video – “Mere Joote Mein Tu Chal Ke Toh Dekh” (try walking in my shoes). The campaign launched with a teaser splashed across social media, followed by the main video launch. As a digital only campaign, we ensured the track was easily available across platforms on social media

12+ million total views, 2 million views in the first 48 hours, 20 million total reach, 600k engagements on YouTube, 18 million impressions on YouTube alone. MUSIC STREAMING PLATFORMS The song was awarded ‘Track of the week’ by BBC Asia Network, Highest click through of home page banner in 2017 on Shazam – 658k clicks, 3+ million impressions and 60k+ streams on Saavn, India’s leading music streaming app. DIVINE GOES FROM RAGS TO RICHES Signs deals with record labels, Sold out concerts around the world. Collaborates with industry’s best – DJ (Nucleya), Bollywood Director (Anurag Kashyap), US-based Singer (Raja Kumari), A movie is now being made on his life, starting Bollywood's leading actor ENGAGEMENT People were dancing to India's street culture anthem the world ober (California, United Kingdom, Leicester, Japan, Australia, India etc.), SALES Sales of PUMA Suedes in the first two months were 44% more than pre-campaign period.

The campaign is built around a music video that was created to introduce India to its underground street culture. Puma Suede collaborated with Divine, the face of India’s street culture; who in turn recruited other artists from around the country to represent different languages and genres of street art. In a country where art, film and music are slotted to be either classical or Bollywood; Suede Gully opened the conversation to underground being a legit classification. And gave India its first street-hold name in Divine.

LOVE FOR INTERNATIONAL STREET CULTURE The digitally connected youth of India was exposed to the world. From the music they were hearing to the artists they were following, admiration for the international street and hip-hop culture was growing. TALENT ACROSS INDIA’S STREETS Our research across the country helped us realise that there was a lot of hidden underground talent in India. Talent existed in the form of art, music, dance, graffiti and a lot more. It had a unique mixture of western influence and local Indian flavour. But, it was all in silos, without one cohesive culture or movement. ESTABLISHING ONE SINGLE MOVEMENT With 22 official languages, 1652 unofficial dialects and a unique street language changing from one street to another, the artists in India were diverse. Thus, to create one nationwide street movement, it was imperative to truly represent the diversity of the streets across India.