MTV Beats is India’s No1 Contemporary Hindi Music channel and with that title comes responsibility, a responsibility to lead conversation. We wanted to create a campaign that would be a symbol of evolution in Indian music , to give India its first unlabeled love duet album written and composed by artists, musicians from the LGBTQIA+ community who came together to celebrate love and also bring forth a representation of the community in music, it was a step towards normalizing conversation on same gender love - to normalize the visual of love beyond gender. MTV Beats aimed to give to these artists a a platform as we always.

Producing between 1,500 and 2,000 movies a year across 20 languages, India has the largest film industry in the world. But this industry hadn’t been doing justice to a community that 71% of youth in our country were accepting of – The LGBTQIA+ community, the portrayal of them and their love was painted with a comical lens which placed them at a disadvantage.

In the recent years Indian cinema has produced a handful of productions revolving around the LGBTQIA+ community which is no doubt a step in the right direction but while Bollywood’s quintessential love stories were being rewritten to be inclusive, Bollywood music hadn’t really made much progress, despite the sheer talent in the community there was close to no representation of them in mainstream music and as India’s leading music channel that’s where we put our focus.

We decided to give dignity to a kind love of love that was made fun of discouraged and shamed. We decided on a fair and open portrayal of queer love through MTV Beats Love Duet, a love album written and composed by the LGBTQIA+ community. Each song and its music video disrupted the notion of what love looked like to our audience.

Banking on the nostalgia of old movie posters where on-screen romance which was depicted by two flowers embracing each other; The flowers were to signify a girl and boy making love or kissing but we disrupted this visual by replacing these flowers with same-gender couples.

MTV Beats is a family viewed channel, the creative route taken was to raise eyebrows by more to normalize the visual of same gender love, it was to re-write the notion of love being just between a man and a women

The MTV Beats Love Duet campaign, sought to normalize conversations around queer love, as well as amplify the voices and work of LGBTQ+ talent in the music industry.

MTV Beats partnered with multiple LGBTQ+ singers, composers, dancers & performers. The artists were involved in everything from conception to execution, with the MTV team providing the expertise, the marketing, resources and the platform.

Each song in the album was dedicated to bringing out an showcasing an unconventional meeting of two hearts

We also launched a rainbow mic filter which enabled our audience to join in on the campaign and celebrate their love.

The release of MTV Beats Love Duet – India’s first gender atypical album, marked the two-year anniversary of India’s Supreme Court decision to strike down a centuries-old law that made homosexuality a crime.

Before the launch of the first song of the album, MTV Beats played around with old school Bollywood songs and turned them into gender neutral and pronoun free love songs to set the tone of the campaign. The campaign was revealed with a curtain-raiser on Instagram, along with teasers. This was followed by the artists creating a baton pass chain that lead the viewers from across the community to the MTV Beats' page where we revealed the album details. To shift the limelight to the artist behind the songs, through an IGTV series called 'Love Questions' artists shared with the nation their personal love journey inspiring many that could be confused or oppressed.

Our campaign garnered a total reach of 30 MN, with total views of 3MN and an engagement of 2.8 MN with an engagement rate of 8.91%. We also made PR Impressions worth the reach of 286.2 MN with an approximate value of 0.4MN USD - AT ZERO COST. The songs that played on air with a channel reach of 216 MN