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Ad Club, AAAI to fight violence against women together
MUMBAI: The Advertising Club (TAC) and the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI) have combined forces to launch a campaign to pitch communication as a force for good and battle the scourge of violence against women.
Explaining the thought behind the initiative, The Advertising Club president Raj Nayak said, “From governments to Fortune 500 companies, everybody entrusts us to communicate their agenda to the larger public. It is time to take our combined learnings and experience to devise a campaign that is in the interests of this larger public. To this end, we will be running a national search for a multi-media campaign that will aim to mitigate violence against women. I am confident that, as one, our industry will rise to pool in the highly creative resources at our disposal, to come up with a highly creative and effective communication campaign. We will fund the production of the winning campaign and launch it at GoaFest in April 2017.”
Elaborating further, AAAI president Nakul Chopra commented, “Violence against women is an issue that concerns each and every one of us. As an industry we have the finest creative minds and strongest media linkages that are at the core of a high voltage communication effort. We also have the heart to take up a cause like this at a national level. I believe it will make the younger people proud to be a part of an industry that cares about real problems and uses its resources to address them.”
GoaFest chairman Ashish Bhasin observed the growing scope of the festival, saying, “GoaFest was all about saluting creativity and presenting the Abby awards. We then added a knowledge quotient with the day-long seminars. Now, with this meaningful effort being launched here, the festival will celebrate not just our achievements but lay down our agenda of giving back to the society that we influence through our creativity.”
The Advertising Club and the Advertising Association of India will release the campaign to call for entries on 19 January, 2017. The entries would be judged by an elite jury and the winning entry would be produced as a multimedia campaign and released ceremoniously on 7 April at the Goafest.
MAM
Kate Rouch steps down as OpenAI Chief Marketing Officer
Marketing leader prioritises health after late-stage breast cancer diagnosis.
MUMBAI: When the toughest battle moves from the boardroom to the personal front, even the sharpest minds know it’s time to step back and focus on winning the most important fight of all. Kate Rouch, chief marketing officer at OpenAI, has announced she is stepping down from her role to focus on recovery following a diagnosis of late-stage breast cancer.
In a heartfelt LinkedIn post, Rouch revealed she was diagnosed around a year and a half ago, shortly after taking on the CMO position. Despite undergoing intensive treatment, she continued to lead the company’s marketing function through what she described as one of the most challenging periods of her career.
She explained that while she remained deeply committed to her role and team, she had reached a point where prioritising her health and recovery had become essential. Rouch called the decision difficult, noting it required acknowledging personal limits and shifting priorities. She reflected that the experience had reshaped her understanding of courage not always about pushing harder, but sometimes about stepping back to focus on long-term wellbeing, family and sustainability.
Rouch expressed gratitude to her team and colleagues for their support. She mentioned that Gary will step in to help lead the function and recruit a successor. She plans to support the transition and remains open to returning in a different capacity in the future, depending on her health.
Prior to joining OpenAI, Rouch served as the first chief marketing officer at Coinbase and spent over a decade at Meta, where she was vice president and global head of brand and product marketing.
She also thanked well-wishers for their messages and shared that stories from fellow survivors had a meaningful impact during her treatment journey.
In the high-stakes world of tech marketing, Kate Rouch has always been known for her strategic brilliance. Now, she is showing a different kind of strength, one that reminds us that even the most driven leaders sometimes need to pause, heal, and come back stronger when the time is right. Wishing her a full and steady recovery.
