MAM
Students’ foreheads and cars for promoting brands
LONDON: Marketers looking at new innovative approaches to spread brand awareness are letting their imagination run wild. However, their wacky strategies could be a blessing in disguise for students who get to earn money for doing the same.
The Guardian has reported that a creative marketing agency, Cunning Stunts, has started an initiative to turn students’ foreheads into billboards for carrying brand messages.
Meanwhile, a second marketing firm, Comm-Motion, has offered car owners money if they allow their cars to be “wrapped” in the livery of a high-profile brand. The firm’s marketing director D Lindsay Kennard has offered remuneration up to ?220 a month.
Students can earn up to ?88.20 a week for merely wearing a corporate logo on their head for a minimum of three hours each day. The brand or product message will be attached by a vegetable dye transfer and the students will be paid to leave the logos untouched.
The report also states that the “lads” magazine FHM and the youth pay-TV channel CNX, have signed up in addition to a recruitment drive for students at Oxford, Umist in Manchester, Leeds, and Roehampton in London.
“With student debt becoming such a massive issue, we thought we’d offer students maximum reward for minimum input,” Cunning Stunts MD Anna Carloss, was quoted as saying in the report. “Participating brands get a unique advertising medium as well as giving something back to students.” She added the students would need to be mobile so that more people could see it.
The scheme is already finding some enthusiastic takers. Oli Merrel, at Falmouth College of Arts, in Cornwall, was quoted as saying: “I don’t see the difference between an advert on a billboard and one on my forehead – except I’ll be earning money from it.”
Brands
Tata Consumer Products highlights workplace bias with no repeat campaign
Women often repeat ideas to be heard; Tata campaign spotlights bias
MUMBAI: In many offices, a familiar moment unfolds. A woman shares an idea in a meeting. The room nods politely, then moves on. A few minutes later, someone else repeats the same thought and suddenly it lands.
This International Women’s Day, Tata Consumer Products is drawing attention to that quiet but persistent workplace dynamic through TheNoRepeatCampaign, an initiative that highlights how often women must repeat themselves before their ideas are acknowledged.
Conceptualised by Schbang, the campaign centres on a mockumentary-style film featuring a corporate employee known simply as “Doobara”, which literally means “again”. The character symbolises the many women across workplaces who find themselves restating their ideas during meetings, brainstorms and presentations before they receive recognition.
The campaign is grounded in research that reflects a broader workplace pattern. According to McKinsey & Company’s Women in the Workplace 2024 report, 39 percent of women say they are interrupted or spoken over in professional settings. Research by Perceptyx in 2022 adds to that picture, with 19 percent of women reporting frequent interruptions and 42 percent saying it happens at least sometimes.
Tata Consumer Products head of corporate communications and investor relations Nidhi Verma, said the campaign aims to bring a commonly experienced but rarely discussed bias into the open.
“Workplaces thrive when every voice is heard the first time it speaks. With #TheNoRepeatCampaign, we wanted to shine a light on a bias that many women experience but rarely gets called out openly. By encouraging teams to listen more consciously and acknowledge ideas fairly, we hope to create environments where contributions are valued for their merit, not the number of times they need to be repeated,” she said.
The film cleverly mirrors the very behaviour it critiques. Through deliberate repetition in the storytelling, viewers experience the subtle frustration of having a point overlooked until someone else echoes it back to the room.
The initiative also ties into Tata Consumer Products’ internal SpeakUp culture, which encourages employees to share ideas and feedback openly while emphasising the shared responsibility of listening and acknowledging contributions.
Schbang president of solutions Jitto George, said the insight behind the campaign came from everyday workplace observations.
“The insight was simple but powerful. Many women have experienced moments where their ideas gain traction only after someone else repeats them. We wanted the storytelling to reflect that reality in a way that feels relatable, slightly uncomfortable and difficult to ignore. The mockumentary format helped capture that everyday dynamic while prompting viewers to rethink how conversations unfold in their own workplaces,” he said.
Aligned with International Women’s Day 2026’s theme, “Give To Gain”, the campaign underlines a simple message. When organisations give attention, acknowledgement and visibility to women’s voices, the entire workplace benefits.
After all, when good ideas are heard the first time, they do not need a second attempt.
