Beyond the ‘I’m Fine’ Mask: How Mpower & Schbang Are Unpacking Emotional Baggage to Bridge India’s Mental Health Care Gap

The Hidden Weight Behind ‘I’m Fine

’In a digital landscape often dominated by superficial engagement, mental health service provider Mpower—an initiative of the Aditya Birla Education Trust (ABET)—has partnered with creative agency Schbang to introduce a campaign that prioritizes genuine emotional connection. Titled #UnpackTheBaggage, the public awareness campaign explores the deep-seated emotional weight that individuals silently carry behind everyday, routine responses like “I’m fine.”   

By utilizing a visual metaphor of an everyday, relatable object, the campaign film illustrates how unresolved experiences, societal pressures, and personal scarring accumulate over time, shaping how people navigate adulthood.   

Data-Backed Narrative: The 49.5% Care Gap

At the heart of #UnpackTheBaggage is empirical research rather than mere creative intuition. The campaign directly stems from findings in Mpower’s ‘Unpack Your Emotional Baggage’ survey, which analyzed responses from young adults aged 18 to 25 across 10 regions in India:

• 49.5% of respondents admitted to hiding difficult emotions and coping with them completely alone.
• Only 9.2% reported seeking professional mental health support.

This stark disparity underscores a major gap between experiencing severe emotional distress and actively taking steps toward help-seeking—a gap the campaign aims to narrow by sparking early, honest conversations.

Strategic Marketing: Moving Past Ad Fatigue to Spark Real Dialogue

For modern audiences accustomed to repetitive social messaging, effective brand communication requires breaking through the noise with deep relevance and narrative authenticity.

Highlighting the strategy behind the campaign, Roshan Wadhwani, Vice President – Marketing, Aditya Birla Education Trust, shared: “One of the challenges in mental health communication is finding a way to move beyond messages people have heard before and make them stop and think. With #UnpackTheBaggage, we wanted to take a familiar part of everyday life and look at it from a different perspective. The idea was to create something that stays with the viewer beyond the film itself and sparks a conversation.”   

Agency Perspective: Personal Touch Meets Purpose-Driven Creative Execution

The campaign marks another milestone in purpose-led branding, aligning storytelling with real human empathy to build long-term trust.

Commenting on the creative development, Rajeshwari Rao, National Creative Director at Schbang, stated:

“This film is definitely a lot more personal to everyone involved right from its inception to its final execution. Because who amongst us hasn’t been scarred by life? Professionally and creatively, it ticks all the right boxes for us as the creative agency, but more importantly, our partnership with The Aditya Birla Education Trust has been all the more gratifying given the subject matter of this campaign. We were stoked from the outset to bring their vision to life.”   

Building Impact Beyond the Screen

Through #UnpackTheBaggage, Mpower and Schbang demonstrate how brand narratives can serve as a powerful catalyst for social change. By normalizing mental health discussions and urging young adults to confront the invisible weight they carry, the initiative seeks to replace isolated suffering with open dialogue and timely professional care.