Spotted: Swiggy's performance art as ad

In a mall in Mumbai, hyperlocal delivery platform Swiggy installed a cage—or rather a chicken coop—with a man lying down on a white couch, relaxed if not a little bored. Predictably, there is a large TV in front of him that he can mindlessly binge-watch while simultaneously scrolling on his phone. By all accounts, this is a man in need of a plan to go out and socialize.

How many of us can relate to evenings like this, cooped up inside our homes bored, wondering what to do? Swiggy takes the ‘cooped up’ idea a little too literally with its man in the cage as people walk past him. What’s more, a board encourages bystanders to press a large red nuclear-looking button to ‘create a scene’. Each press triggers party lights or a similar fun ‘scene’ inside the coop, reminding the man inside (and us) that life can be better than sitting on a couch and whiling time away.

The marketing campaign was a New Years’ Eve special for Swiggy’s latest venture ‘Scenes’—an app for live events and other going-out options, much like Zomato’s District and BookMyShow. We were reminded of other similar marketing attempts in the past few years that rely on performance art in public places to get people talking not just in real life but also online, in the comments section of the many videos posted by the brand and those who saw the installation live. Swiggy’s own video of the installation has 3.4 million views on Instagram alone and plenty of talk on LinkedIn. In early 2025, Apple TV ran live installations to market the latest season of its original series Severance, including a set of the office of Lumon Industries—where the show is based—in New York City’s Grand Central Station. The installation went instantly viral, not least because it was bang in the middle of the busiest US railway station.

Billboards and ‘experiential’ marketing, when done right, can help a brand go viral online organically, something that is getting increasingly harder to do. But, as big brands increasingly lean into thought-provoking performance pieces in the style of contemporary schools of art, it is worth remembering that most famous performance artists have used similar, near-voyeuristic installations to reveal uncomfortable truths about society. A great example is the Serbian performer Marina Abramovic, whose famous performance piece Rhythm 0 invites spectators to use objects on her body. Some, such as a comb, can be used to groom her hair, while others, such as a sharp knife, can be used to hurt her. Over a six-hour performance, the audience turns increasingly violent in the absence of any rules or obvious deterrents. Abramovic’s piece, which she first performed in 1974, was meant to be a mirror to society’s ugly misogyny.