Smugglers’ Inn: Providing foreign countries with bullets and anthrax-like pathogens since 2012.

"Yoo-hoo, Smugglers!  Might we discuss this parcel with you?"

London’s Raindance Film Festival received a bit of a shock when they received a package from Smuggler’s Inn containing hundreds of .45 caliber bullets.  (Thanks, Fed-Ex, now we know who will ship all the these surplus hand grenades we’ve been selling on e-Bay.)

To be fair, the brass cartridges we sent to Raindance were loaded not with lead and powder, but messages which began, “You’re fingerprints have turned up on a piece of evidence in a criminal investigation.”  Further reading asked you to report to the Raindance film festival for questioning, where you may also buy tickets “for a good crime drama or shoot-em-up.”  The bullets were just one of several no-budget/high PR gags we did to promote the various offerings at the 20th incarnation of London’s bravest independent film festival.  Other ideas included tricking passers-by into touching a poster that had supposedly been sprayed with poison and posting festival flyers sideways at ground-level on pub walls and in gutters so London’s notoriously hard-drinking young people could more easily read them.

Yes, if you’re a paying customer, Smug’s can promise you an effective campaign that you’ll be comfortable with, but if you’re a film festival, free clinic or similar, you may have to trust us that whatever we give you is going to work.

So, did Smugglers’ Inn deliver for Raindance?  While we can’t take credit for the festival’s exceptional line-up of great features and short films, attendance for the 20-year anniversary set records and re-established Raindance as a mandatory stop on the indie circuit.  Raindance, as well as some other people, blogged about the crazy promotions, which was what we wanted.  Your friends at Smug’s are presently lobbying to shoot the festival trailers for the 21st Raindance Festival, which we hope to attend next October in London.  Provided, of course, we aren’t in a black-site prison.