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Stayfree India launches #ProjectFreePeriod

Published

8 years ago

May 1, 2018

MUMBAI: While Stayfree is a feminine hygiene brand, it believes that its purpose is to help women and girls make each day count, as they move toward their dreams.

Which is why the efforts of Stayfree is not just to normalise period days, but to encourage women to nurture their dreams of progress. No matter which section of the society she belongs to, whatever be her age or her community. And that brought into focus a community that had a completely different outlook toward their periods.

https://www.facebook.com/StayfreeIndia/videos/1824183327601459/

While almost every woman dreads her period days, there were women who looked forward to it. For whom their period was the only respite from the lives they were being forced to lead.

These are the women of the sex trade. While the belief is that these women need to be rescued from this trade, the truth is that they will struggle to find other ways to sustain themselves. And so even the rescued ones often return and are plunged even deeper into this world of exploitation with their period days often being the only days of the month that they get for themselves. The DDB Mudra Group and Stayfree India thought this forced break could be a way to help these women cultivate their own #DreamsofProgress.

And so was born #ProjectFreePeriod. Through collaborations with professional skill trainers, a vocational training programme was created to equip these women with skills that could help them sustain themselves outside of the sex trade. While finding relevant skills was the easy part, the challenge was to condense them into three-day training modules so that the three days of their periods could be turned into three days of learning.

And finally, in January, with the help of Prerana, a local NGO, the first edition of #ProjectFreePeriod was launched in the red light district of Mumbai. In the workshops since, over 30 women have been a part of this programme and have been taught skills that range from candle-making, embroidery, henna-art, soft-toy making to a basic beautician course. There shall be stalls put up in flea markets and malls to display the products of their newly acquired skills; to create more awareness and support for this initiative.

The project now runs through the month and has a consistently expanding curriculum of skills. So much so that the women are finding ways to make more time to learn and hone new skills. Through recruitment drives on social media, the initiative has also put together a database of volunteers to keep scaling up this project.

The plan is now to take the training out of the classrooms, for both the women and the trainers; through simple instructional videos that can be shared through WhatsApp.

As the initiative is spreading its wings, Stayfree India and the DDB Mudra Group are aiming to partner with other non-profit organisations to replicate this model and access a wider database of students.

DDB Mudra Group national creative director Rahul Mathew says, “To go from normalising periods in the lives of women to using periods to normalise the lives of women in the sex trade; is a great example of the kind of power and influence brands can wield. Project Free Period turns the period from a pause to an opportunity, for these women to sustain a life outside of the trade.”

Prerana project manager Mugdha Dandekar mentions, “This project brings a chance for the women in the red-light areas to step out of the exploitative lifecycle. Uneducated and with no income security, such an opportunity to learn an alternative vocation is crucial. Working in the red-light areas of Mumbai, we often see such initiatives in practice, but this considers the comfort and convenience of our women. The women have chosen the days they would like to come for the training, so that it doesn’t disrupt their lives. The change has to be gradual, not on weekly or monthly basis, and this project understands that. Therefore, we see a strong commitment from our women to hold onto this opportunity and give change a chance.”

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Amazon Ads maps 2026 as AI and streaming rewrite ad playbooks

Published

2 months ago

January 15, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.

At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.

“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”

One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.

AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.

Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.

Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.

Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.

Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.

Ad Campaigns

Publicis India appoints Sonal Verma as Arc Worldwide MD

Published

2 months ago

January 15, 2026

indiantelevision.com Team

MUMBAI: Publicis Groupe India has appointed Sonal Verma as managing director of Arc Worldwide India, handing the reins of its experiential and shopper marketing business to a leader steeped in live brands and real world storytelling.

Arc Worldwide, the Groupe’s specialist arm focused on experiences that nudge consumers from curiosity to checkout, sits at the intersection of creativity, commerce and culture. Verma’s mandate is to sharpen that edge as brands grapple with shorter attention spans and more complicated buying journeys.

Verma joins from Cheil India, where she spent nearly five years building and leading the brand experience practice, most recently as senior vice president and head of brand experience. Her career reads like a tour of India’s experiential landscape, with leadership roles at Momentum Worldwide, Percept D Mark, Blockkbuster Events and Showtime Events.

She has also held senior activation roles at Radio City and The Times of India, giving her a rare mix of agency, media and on-ground execution experience. The common thread has been simple: turning big ideas into moments people remember and talk about.

At Arc Worldwide India, Verma will focus on expanding the agency’s experiential and shopper capabilities, strengthening client partnerships and keeping the work firmly rooted in consumer behaviour rather than buzzwords.

With Verma at the helm, Arc Worldwide is expected to double down on ideas that live beyond screens and closer to everyday life. For an industry obsessed with clicks and scrolls, this is a reminder that sometimes the strongest connections still happen face to face.

Ad Campaigns

Barbeque Nation taps ‘milne ki bhookh’ to kick off the new year

Published

2 months ago

December 29, 2025

indiantelevision.com Team

BENGALURU: Barbeque Nation is ringing in the new year with a reminder that some cravings cannot be ordered online. The casual dining chain has rolled out a new film campaign, milne ki bhookh, pitching its restaurants as places to meet, reconnect and linger over food.

Set against a world of constant messages and missed meet-ups, the campaign leans into a simple truth: dining out remains one of the few rituals that still brings people together. Barbeque Nation positions itself as the excuse and the setting for real conversations, shared plates and unhurried moments.

Nakul Gupta, cmo at Barbeque Nation, says the brand has long been about shared celebrations. As the year turns, milne ki bhookh captures what he calls a growing hunger to meet, connect and spend time together, with food at the centre of that experience.

Created by Makani Creatives, the campaign comprises three films built around Barbeque Nation’s signature grills and desserts. The storytelling is deliberately sensorial, designed to spark cravings while nudging diners to step out and meet in person.

Pavan Punjabi, chief integration officer at Makani Creatives, says the idea stems from a familiar contradiction. People are constantly connected, yet meetings with loved ones are endlessly postponed. Milne ki bhookh, he says, is a gentle push to make time for real-life catch-ups, using food as the reason to come together, share a meal and create memories.

The campaign breaks on December 25 with the grilled prawns film and will run for two months, amplified across digital platforms. As the new year begins, Barbeque Nation is betting that the strongest appetite of all is not for food alone, but for each other.