Still Free - Ecko Unltd.

In 2006 a shaky video appeared online showing a graffiti artist sneaking onto Air Force One and spray painting Still Free on its blue belly. The clip felt raw and dangerous. News blogs picked it up. Message boards exploded. Commentators asked how a civilian could get that close to the president’s plane. For a few days the internet treated it like a real security breach.

It was not real. It was a story.

The film came from Droga5 for Marc Ecko’s streetwear brand. Instead of buying ads, the agency staged a fake act of rebellion and released it as found footage. The production used a retired Boeing 747 and a controlled shoot. The editing leaned into imperfection. Handheld shots. Blown highlights. Breathless pacing. Everything signaled danger and urgency.

The plan was simple. Make the internet do the distribution. Give people something that felt forbidden. Let them argue about it before anyone explained it.

YouTube was young. Twitter barely mattered. Yet the clip traveled fast through forums and blogs. Some viewers cheered the audacity. Others feared the implications. A few news outlets treated it as a genuine incident. The campaign revealed how easily authenticity could be manufactured and how hungry the web was for spectacle.

Only later did Ecko release a follow up video revealing the hoax and thanking the Secret Service for their cooperation. The reveal turned outrage into applause. The brand suddenly stood for boldness and cleverness rather than just clothing.

The stunt sits at the start of modern brand storytelling. It showed that a commercial could masquerade as culture and that controversy could be a delivery system. It also raised questions that feel familiar now. What is real online. Who benefits from confusion. How far can a brand go before playacting becomes deception.

Droga5 did not just sell hoodies. They sold a moment of shared disbelief. In doing so they proved that in the attention economy, a convincing myth can travel faster than any banner ad.