India Issues Its Men A Challenge Via The Newspaper

Here’s a pretty direct newspaper ad that ran in the Times of India:

The Huffington Post has more about the backstory on the ad:

In the wake of a highly-publicized gang rape in which the 23-year-old female victim died from the injuries she sustained, the Indian newspaper printed an ad on January 22nd asking men to respect women — as part of their manhood.

What’s interesting here is not that the ad ran — but that it seems to be a message directly written and sponsored by the newspaper itself. Ordinarily, you might see such advocacy on the editorial page. But this is the reverse of the now in-vogue “native advertising.” It looks like an ad, designed to stand out from the rest of the paper. Maybe therein lies its strength.