Founded in 1895, Hakuhodo, based in Japan, is one of the world’s oldest and largest marketing firms, and since 2000, has established its presence in India. As part of its cultural decoding, Hakuhodo India, together with its network agency Ma+Th who brought their expertise in creative content and entertainment marketing, recently launched the whitepaper, “Lights, Camera, Insights! —A Sei-katsu-sha Lens to Decode Mindset through 2025 Content”. This is an extension of their previous study, “Emerging Aspirations: Hakuhodo India Trends 2025”, this time through popular cinema and OTT content.
The ‘Sei-katsu-sha’ is Hakuhodo’s term for the holistic individual, which looks at people not merely as consumers with purchasing power, but as holistic beings living everyday lives. The whitepaper, therefore, explores how “content”—cinema and OTT—reflects and shapes the mindset of the Sei-katsu-sha.
The whitepaper highlights an interesting observation, where the most talked-about content in 2025 broke away from “formula”. These stories did not have templated heroes, safe storylines, or predictable emotional pulls. Instead, they were original, emotionally nuanced, and refreshingly unpredictable.
The big shift is from content as a temporary escape from life to content that confronts
the reality of life. We are no longer watching content to forget our reality. We are watching it to understand and navigate our reality. Decoding this shift, the white paper outlines five key trends through the Sei-katsu-sha lens.
Popular Indian films used to have larger-than-life heroes, with grand myths, and extraordinary lives that inspired us. But today, these stories feel distant. Instead, there is a preference for stories of lesser-known figures rooted in regional and tribal beliefs. “Yeh Dil Maange Local Lore!” The Sei-katsu-sha wants to discover their own heroes, be it regional deities or local freedom fighters.
The Sei-katsu-sha also prefers seeing ordinary lives on screen—flawed characters navigating familiar emotions. It could be the daily struggles of money pressures and difficult bosses, or family expectations.
Earlier, the camera knew when to look away before things got too violent or gory. But now, there is no attempt to cushion the blow, be it caste atrocities, gender violence, or psychopathic behaviour. Anger has become central to these characters.
The Sei-katsu-sha is undergoing a “Masculinity crisis”, where they are feeling inadequate and unseen. This is why the “new angry man” trope resonates. Beneath all the aggression, he is struggling to find his place in this new world.
We often think of cinema as a refuge from life’s messiness. But that ideal world portrayed on screen now feels like a distant promise. There is a preference for relationships on screen that coexist with conflict, love that allows room for mistakes, and characters who own their unedited complexity.
The Sei-katsu-sha belongs to a generation that gets into and out of relationships with unprecedented ease, where respect, effort, emotional safety, and shared ambition are increasingly prioritized. People are no longer shrinking themselves to fit into a relationship. It is “Conditional Love Aaj Kal”.
The character who sacrifices constantly has now disappeared. Instead, you have characters who navigate morally conflicted situations by compromising.
This includes the way one interacts not just with the lover, but also the state. We keep hearing stories of corruption, silenced voices, and justice failing ordinary people. So, the Sei-katsu-sha does not condemn a character who takes extreme steps, because they recognize and empathize with the anger and helplessness. “Saat Khoon Bhi Maaf!”
For decades, popular storytelling thrived on legible characters, fixed roles, clear heroes, and clearer villains. However, today, this clarity feels disconnected from our reality. What resonates, instead, are narratives that acknowledge contradiction and context.
The Sei-katsu-sha prefers moral ambiguity over moral certainty. “Nayak Bhi, Khalnayak Bhi!” The heroes can often feel tired, unsure, and sometimes fail, while the villain, too, is shaped by pressure and loss. Therefore, our stories are no longer about picking a side, but recognizing that both heroes and villains are human.
Before, there were external markers of success, and these were built on status and individual achievement. Now, they are replaced by a more internal kind of success—a life that feels peaceful, purposeful, and emotionally aligned. Sei-katsu-sha, thus, prefers an emotionally sustainable life, rooted in community and identity.
At the core of the above five trends is a simple belief. In an increasingly unfair, conflicted, and unpredictable world, the Sei-katsu-sha does not want content that is a temporary escape from everyday life. Instead, in 2025, we saw a gravitation towards content that confronts the reality of life, mirroring their anxieties, vulnerabilities, and moral dilemmas. Popular 2025 content is, thus, less about distraction, and more about emotional preparedness. This is the core insight.
This whitepaper, gathered by a team poring over 50+ pieces of content, does not just offer marketers and brands key insights into a dynamic society, one where tradition and modernity coexist and individuals confidently chart their own paths. It also outlines the new codes of heroism, identity, morality, aspiration, success, and beauty that brands would need to embrace for continued relevance.
You can download the whitepaper by visiting the Hakuhodo India website at hakuhodoindia.com