Unless you have been locked in a dressing room the past week, you've probably heard about the UNIQLO sex selfie scandal. In it, a young Chinese couple film themselves copulating in a fitting room of the popular clothing brand. The clip lasts only 71 seconds - the man probably less - but the real climax is what occurred after.

The video was uploaded onto Chinese mobile app WeChat around 11 pm on July 14. By the very next morning it had spread on social media like a venereal disease, dominating the top 10 trending topics on microblogging site Weibo. By the end of the week, even respectable international newspapers like The New York Times and The Daily Mail had covered the viral phenomenon.

The only thing that fascinated netizens more than trying to "flesh search" the identities of its frisky stars (supposedly students at a Beijing university) was speculating on the source of the video. Was it an attempt for the couple to become online celebrities like so many other past sex sensations? Or, more likely, branding? If so, we should award it as the best marketing campaign of the year.

At this point, we can presume that nearly every male in the mainland has viewed the video (probably many times). "Baby, wanna go shopping at UNIQLO?" has become the latest catchphrase for Chinese millennials seeking casual encounters. UNIQLO's Sanlitun location, where the video was filmed, is now a popular pilgrimage site for young couples to re-enact sexual poses in front of the store. And the Chinese word for UNIQLO has been searched tens of millions of times on Weibo, according to Sohu.com statistics.

Although UNIQLO, a Japanese company, issued a formal announcement on its Weibo account "firmly denying" that the X-rated video was planned or shot by its marketing team, popular opinion says it was a bold marketing stunt by the company to revamp their wholesomely bland image. For a brand whose uninspiring low-priced casual wear was heretofore struggling to find a niche among China's spoiled-by-choices younger generation, you can bet that 21-year-old girl's exposed butt that her naughty selfie has helped expose UNIQLO to 1.3 billion new potential customers.

But this invites an even bigger question: Why did this video attract so much attention in the first place? Why was this anti-climactic clip any different than all the other naughty home videos online? Perhaps because serious content has become old-fashioned among the Social Media Generation. A 2015 Research Report on Media Usage of College Students shows that over half of university-aged youth do not read newspapers anymore. Instead, over 90 percent of them spend at least two hours (more like 10) online daily, with most watching videos or sharing shallow content. Anyone who wanted to orchestrate a stealth marketing campaign online needed only to refer to user statistics to see that sex sells.

In China, however, such prurient publicity doesn't come without legal penalties. Following an official statement by the Cyberspace Administration of China condemning the mainland's two main Internet companies, Sina and Tencent, for letting the video go viral, and an editorial in the Beijing News saying "Businesses that use this sort of rotten 'Internet commerce' disrupt the morality of commerce," five people suspected to be involved in the "UNIQLO Incident," were taken into police custody.

According to China Criminal Law, "people who produce, copy, publish, sell or spread pornographic material for commercial purposes face up to 10 years in jail." But based on past precedent, the most any of these perpetrators will be punished is a small fine.

A similar incident occurred last year here in Shanghai, where a video showing two women stripping on the Metro was shared online. Later, it was confirmed that the video was part of a marketing stunt by local laundry service company Tidy. According to ThePaper.cn, the company was fined 475,000 yuan ($76,491) for "vulgar content in an online commercial campaign."

For UNIQLO, who by some estimates has received at least 12 million yuan worth of free online advertising as a result of the video and media coverage, a penalty is a small price to pay for the gross revenue its 370 stores in 80 cities on the Chinese mainland will see in sales. With such a profitable influence, I cannot help wonder, then, which brand will be the next to strip for us?