MAM
Coca-cola bridges Christmas miles with a radio love letter to OFWs
MUMBAI: Home doesn’t always come wrapped in ribbon sometimes, it arrives on the radio. This Christmas, The Coca-cola Company transformed Australia’s airwaves into an emotional lifeline for millions of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), launching SoundOfHome.FM, a 24-hour festive broadcast designed to bring the sound of family back to those celebrating far from home.
Running from 6 pm on Christmas Eve to 6 pm on Christmas Day, SoundOfHome.FM stitched together Caroloke sessions (a festive mash-up of carols and karaoke), personal voice notes and heartfelt dedications recorded by families across the Philippines. Broadcast across Australia, the initiative turned radio into a long-distance love letter, closing emotional gaps that geography could not.
The idea tapped into a familiar Christmas truth: the season often weighs heaviest on those who give the most. For OFWs, the quiet backbone of countless households, the holidays amplify distance. To make sure every message found its way home, Coca-Cola created a notification system that alerted listeners when their family’s dedication was about to air, ensuring no moment was missed.
Weeks before Christmas, the brand took the idea on the road with a nationwide Caroloke Caravan, recording messages at Pasko festivals and city centres across the Philippines. Families also uploaded dedications digitally, expanding participation beyond physical locations. The result was a rolling soundtrack of gratitude, love and longing carried not by video screens, but by voices.
The initiative was accompanied by a Christmas film, Sound of Home, capturing real reactions from OFWs mid-shift from mechanics and kitchen hands to convenience store staff as familiar voices cut through the noise of everyday work. The scenes were quiet, raw and unmistakably human.
“During the holidays, distance can feel heavier than ever,” said Coca-cola marketing director for ASEAN & South Pacific Francis Izon Reyes. “With SoundOfHome.FM, we wanted to bring a piece of home to Filipinos overseas, a voice, a carol, a reminder that their sacrifices are seen and valued.”
Creative agency Ogilvy described the campaign as “closing the silence, if not the distance”, using radio, one of the simplest media formats to deliver one of the season’s most emotionally resonant ideas.
In a year crowded with loud festive campaigns, SoundOfHome.FM chose a softer frequency proving that sometimes, the most powerful Christmas gift isn’t being home, but hearing it.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
