Bombay Times collaborates with Pride Circle and FCB India to launch ‘Out & Proud @Work' campaign - Times of India | Clapboard Ad Archive
Bombay Times’ Out & Proud @Work campaign for Times of India, developed by FCB India in partnership with Pride Circle, advances the conversation on LGBTQ+ inclusion by foregrounding the persistent, routine discrimination faced by queer professionals in India’s workspaces—a theme that remains critical even after the legal progress of 2018. By shifting focus from broad social recognition to the specific and often unspoken economic marginalisation that LGBTQ+ individuals encounter on the job, the campaign leverages deeply personal narratives, epitomised by a CEO’s story of workplace rejection, to make visible the concrete consequences of bias that limit opportunities, suppress potential, and drive talented individuals into obscurity or underpayment regardless of their qualifications. Organized as an integrated 360° push within the media and entertainment category, the campaign uses print, television, digital, and a flagship film set at a company town hall to create urgent resonance both within and beyond the LGBTQ+ community, inviting allies to confront uncomfortable truths and take practical action toward equity. Significantly, the effort eschews the familiar Pride Month window, instead launching at the start of the financial year to directly frame economic inclusion as business-critical rather than symbolic and seasonal, a creative and strategic decision that underscores the reality of livelihoods at stake. In its creative architecture, the campaign follows what Clapboard’s taxonomy classifies as FORMAT#10—Associated User Imagery, anchoring its message in real, aspirational user profiles that foster audience identification, empathy, and allyship while inviting viewers to rethink who belongs and succeeds at work. The partnership with Pride Circle extends the reach from awareness-raising to facilitating actual employment access, acting as a conduit between qualified LGBTQ+ job seekers and inclusive organizations to help shift hiring culture and policy. With stakeholder advocacy from Times of India, FCB India, and Pride Circle, the campaign is explicit in its call for authentic allyship and structural belonging, recognizing that awareness alone is insufficient without parallel empowerment through skills development, entrepreneurship, and workplace policy change. Clapboard rates this 70/100. This campaign signals the need for media-driven storytelling to move decisively beyond passive representation, making workplace inclusion an urgent cultural and commercial imperative for India’s creative and corporate ecosystem.