Red Label made India's first transgender pop band its ad and won the Glass Lion

India's roughly 1.9 million transgender people, the hijra community, are visible in daily life yet largely shut out of mainstream entertainment. Brooke Bond Red Label, Hindustan Unilever's mass-market tea, had spent years telling India that its brand stood for togetherness across 'the widest cultural chasms.' The clever move in January 2016 was to stop saying it and start staging it.

With Mindshare Mumbai and Y-Films, the brand created the 6 Pack Band, billed as India's first transgender pop band: six hijra singers with professionally produced singles and music videos. Bollywood names - Sonu Nigam on 'Sab Rab De Bande', Hrithik Roshan on 'Ae Raju' - appeared as guests, putting the band in the same frame as mainstream stars. The videos reached over 25 million people on YouTube.

The campaign won the Glass Lion Grand Prix at the 63rd Cannes Lions festival in June 2016 - the first Grand Prix of that category for India - a prize reserved for work that shifts culture on gender inequality. The brand got credibility no conventional tea commercial could buy, because it had made a piece of culture rather than a message about one.

Don't advertise inclusion; produce the inclusive act

A values claim ('togetherness') is cheap to say; producing a real band made it verifiable.

Entertainment earns attention advertising must buy - 25 million YouTube views without ad slots.

Celebrity guests put hijra performers inside the mainstream frame instead of outside it.

The band was a durable asset: new singles kept the campaign alive beyond one media flight.

The work won the Glass Lion Grand Prix at Cannes 2016, a first for India in that category.

For a values claim, producing the real thing - a band, a show - beats depicting it in an ad: the artifact is watchable on its own and proves the claim.

The 6 Pack Band released more singles after Cannes and remained a reference case for purpose-led work in India. It cemented Red Label's 'Swad Apnepan Ka' platform, which the brand continued to use for inclusion-themed campaigns.