Indians love Bollywood and re-watch several old movies thanks to multiple streaming platforms. They also mimic a lot of what they see in Bollywood movies – from the dance sequences to the fashion.

However, one other thing also gets copied – sexist and harassment scenes prevalent in these movies.

LUX is a brand that inspires women to rise above everyday sexism and the brand had to find an effective way to intervene.

With ‘THE END’, Lux found a way to intervene on India’s biggest paid streaming platform MX Player to shine a light on widespread sexism that was present

Bollywood is more than just a film industry in India. It is integral part of Indian culture, giving viewers anchors to shape society and play their different roles within it. From the glitz and glamour of Bollywood dance numbers, larger than life set-pieces and grand narratives Bollywood and Indian society is intertwined and mirror each other.

Over the years, a problem that Bollywood has been associated with is the rampant prevalence of Sexism and Misogyny. While new age films are openly tackling this issue, many of the old Bollywood movies with widespread sexism and abuse towards women still play to large viewership across online streaming platforms.

THE WIDESPREAD PREVALENCE OF SEXISM AND MISOGYNY IS BEING NORMALIZED AND IN MANY CASES BEING CELEBRATED BY SECTIONS OF THE AUDIENCE CONSUMING THESE TYPES OF CONTENT ON STREAMING PLATFORMS.

In the pretext of taking the story forward, these sexist scenes are overlooked as female protagonists are subject to abuse, harassment and mental trauma.

LUX is a beauty brand with the purpose of inspiring women to rise above everyday sexism and express their beauty unapologetically. LUX has long stood with women against sexism wherever it occurs; and wanted to create awareness of prevalent sexism in Bollywood movies on streaming platforms.

SITUATION

There is a rampant showcase of sexism, abuse and misogyny towards women in Bollywood content being streamed online. With Reel Sexism leading to Real Sexism in society, there was an urgent need to take a stance and tackle this problem at its heart.

BRIEF

LUX is a beauty brand that inspired women to rise above everyday sexism. We had to find an impactful way to not just shine a light on the issue of sexism in Bollywood content streaming online, but also put a full stop to it.

OBJECTIVES

To create a purposeful and distinctive campaign that brought about real change in society with regard to sexism, while increasing brand power and creating audience engagement and talkability.

THE END is a campaign that challenges sexism in Bollywood, by using the popularity of Bollywood itself. An industry notorious for glorifying and normalising the toxic treatment of women, from stalking to harassment. This directly impacts the women of India as seen through shocking headlines. To end this, we needed to intervene at the exact moment it’s seen in the movies, so we did, with The End credits. Instead of the usual place, we put them at her ‘No’ to show that is the end of the story.

1498 personalised versions of "The End" were created and customised into the movies.

LUX, a brand against sexism, partnered with MX Player, India’s largest paid streaming app, to give the mostly male (66.35%) audience a message they couldn’t ignore.

Online video content consumption in India is bursting at the seams. The total consumption across the online video sector reached 6.1 trillion minutes for the 15-month period from Jan 2022 to Mar 2023.

A lot of this video consumption is for old Bollywood movies. For LUX to engage meaningfully with this Bollywood loving audience, the brand had to connect with them where it mattered the most.

MAKING THE MEDIUM THE MESSAGE IN ITSELF

To ensure that the viewer realized the prevalence of a sexist scene, LUX partnered with India’s largest paid streaming app MX Player to give the audience the power to call out these sexist scenes and also choose to end the movie when a woman’s appeal of ‘NO’ wasn’t heard or acted upon. We showed that the power to not watch content beyond this point resided with the audience themselves.

Using the platform’s data on the most watched sexist movies, we reprogrammed ad space to instead play at the exact moment the woman says ‘no’. This ad mimicked The End credits of that particular movie. We used this unexpected end to provoke viewers with the simple fact, her ‘no’ should always be the end of the story, in the movies and real life.

We scaled this up across the platform, targeting scenes of stalking, harassment, verbal and physical abuse with ‘The End’ credits rolling, at the moment she clearly refuses. We asked women on social to share the sexist movies she wanted to END and made end credits for those too.

By directly targeting audience on the media, we contextualised a strong message against sexism with a simple act. We turned the ad from disruptive to disrupting sexism as it happens.

The campaign had a massive impact on the platform as the prevalence of sexist content was highlighted and effective intervention was made possible across a large number of movies and scenes.

1498 ‘The End’ credits across movies were carried out as an intervention to different types of sexist content. These were used across 3000 movies. We even invited consumers to send us their list of sexist scenes and the ends were created for those scenes.

More than 228 million people were reached on MX Player through the campaign.

The male user base of over 170 million were reached on MX Player.

Our campaign generated $640,000 worth in free PR coverage to 256 million people.

The campaign was covered across leading publications not just in India, but also in countries such as USA, UK, Hong Kong, France, UAE, Singapore, Qatar, Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia

MX Player is India’s leading paid streaming platform with over 228 million monthly average users – a large and diversified user base spanning across the length and breadth of the country.

With over 55% users from non-metropolitan cities and 45% from bigger cities, MX player is a channel that has the ideal mix of audiences representing India.

With over 170 million male users and over 3000 movie titles, launching the campaign on MX player offers LUX the ideal platform to take a stance around sexist content.