The Maharashtra Herald (Pune Edition)

This time round, this long overdue AIDS awareness campaign is targeted not at the high risk behaviour individuals like truck drivers and immigrant population like the Balbir Pasha campaign. But rather at the most neglected high risk group - the wives of the men who indulge in unprotected extramarital sex. This 360 degree campaign, launched by Breakthrough, an international human rights organization, seeks to highlight the fact that the majority of HIV/AIDS infected women in India are married monogamous women and not, as popularly perceived, the commercial sex workers, a fact which might come as a shocker to most people.

The campaign is created by Prasoon Joshi, Creative Director, South and South East Asia, Mccann Erickson. Says Joshi, “Creating a campaign on women and HIV/AIDS was a real challenge. This is the first time that a campaign encourages married couples to get involved in dialogue on gender relations and HIV/AIDS.” The campaign titled ‘What Kind of Man Are You?’ is a 360 degree integrated communications campaign (TV, radio, print, internet, movie theatres, and transportation) in seven languages: Bengali, Hindi, English, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi.

The campaign also includes a music video to the song Maati from Breakthrough’s album Mann ke Manjeere sung by Shubha Mudgal, written by Prasoon Joshi and composed by Shantanu Moitra. The video features Mandira Bedi and Samir Soni and has been directed by Arjun Chandramohan Bali of Red Ice Films. The media partners include STAR, SUN, EN, NDTV, Dainik Bhaskar, NOX, Radio Mirchi and many others. A special partnership with Rediff.com has also provided an SMS number for enquiries along with internet dissemination.