Campaign Metrics
260M reach in two weeks with no paid media investment
1800% increase in social media engagement
8x week-on-week increase in press coverage
30% uptick in brand enquires
40% view-through rate
48% more than the industry standard
> $70,000 in earned media in a week

The Work Behind the Camera

The team behind Chhoti Soch, a film about a female masseuse’s dignity of labour, was proudly women-first and all-brown.

In India, less than 2% of ad filmmakers are women, but we ensured diversity behind the camera with a female filmmaker to eliminate the male gaze. The Executive Creative Director and writer from the creative agency were both women, ensuring female Creatives didn’t just influence the work at a junior/mid-level, but at a decision-making level. Even on the client side, there was 40% women representation, ensuring that the film stays focused on the lead at all times.

We were speaking to a country as communally and linguistically diverse as India, so we also ensured voices from all parts of India contributed to the process. Our clients primarily hailed from mainland North India, the creative agency is headquartered in the oft-catered-to South India, the film itself was shot in Bombay, in West India, our talent hailed from East India (where most spa therapists come from) and we even ensured business representation from North-East India, a region that is ignored in all other brand communication. There was also religious diversity, with folks from various faiths- Hinduism (India’s majoritarian religion), Christianity and Islam, participating in the process.

Lastly, the agency, Talented, is a big believer in neurodiversity positively impacting all creative work, and that ensured neural diversity in one creative lead and one business lead on the campaign.

The Work 

Urban Company, India’s biggest aggregator of at-home blue-collar services has been on a mission to start a conversation about dignity of labour. Despite being a service company, we do not treat our customers like kings- we challenge their preconceived notions by highlighting the respect gap between blue-collar and white-collar workers. So this campaign, like others, began with an exercise we call “bias banking”- multiple focused group discussions with Urban Company’s women massage professionals to understand their lived experiences, conducted in collaboration with anthropologist and fieldwork researcher Garvi Dhar. Equipped with in-depth knowledge about their day-to-day, we wanted to portray their nuanced worldview in the most sensitive manner possible- this led us to develop our film in collaboration with academician and gender expert Dr. Papori Bora who brought invaluable insights to the creative process.

With a plot in place that told an authentic and empathetic story, the casting too had to owe its allegiance to the lived experiences of masseuses across India. We chose to cast Kheya Chattopadhyay, a young actress from East India- the same broad region of India where most spa therapists come from, and the same region that bears the burden of its women being labelled “easy”, making this film, of the community, by the community and for the community.

But we didn’t stop there. Our protagonist is a masseuse from Urban Company, but we intended for her to be a conduit for all the working women of India whose technical expertise is disregarded, and made a joke out of every day. In a country where only 32.8% of the total labour force is female, the film resonated deeply with thousands of women including the seventeen who worked on the campaign and felt that their professional success is attributed to everything except their own hard work.