Ad Campaigns
Dentsu One creates ‘World Toilet Day’ campaign
MUMBAI: Over 300 million women in India daily undergo psychological trauma of having to defecate in open fields. Dentsu One, the full-service creative agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, has launched a campaign to promote “World Toilet Day”.
The film titled ‘Khushboo’ sheds light on this disturbing fact by showing a frighteningly painful story based on a real incident that had happened in Jharkhand.
Set in a rural town, on a wet, rainy dawn, the film shows a man putting his daughter to sleep. In the background, we hear the voice of the young daughter tell her father how he used to give her everything that she ever asked for, except for one thing that she had asked for as she grew older.
She had begged and pleaded for it. She even gave up food. But the father refused to fulfill her wish, saying that he was saving money for her marriage.
As the father’s gentle patting turns into repeated thumps, we realize all is not well. The girl’s voice finally says that while her father had put her to sleep always, this one time, she was going to sleep by herself.
As we see the suicide note that she had left behind, we realize that the father had actually lost his mind and was patting his dead daughter all along.
The father breaks down finally and starts crying bitterly while still thumping the shoulder of his dead daughter.
As the camera pulls up we see the noose hanging from the fan and a lullaby begins to emerge in the sound of rain.
To the haunting melody in the background, we learn that the girl Khushboo committed suicide because her father did not build a toilet in the house.
lives.
The film directs the audience to visit the ProjectHers.com website and sign a petition that will influence the government to create a new law: If you have a house, you must have a toilet.
The film ends with the logo of Project Hers that shows the typical sign on women’s loos with a noose sign.
Writer-director Titus Upputuru says, “That a girl gave up her life because she did not have an access to a toilet was unbelievable. We found many other cases where women give up their lives. About 60% of India’s population does not have an access to toilet facilities. This film and Project Hers attempts to address this issue.”
NATIONAL: Amazon Ads has laid out a sharply tech-led vision for the advertising industry in 2026, arguing that artificial intelligence, streaming TV and creator partnerships will combine to turn brand building into a more precise, performance-driven business.
At the heart of the shift, the company says, is the fusion of AI with Amazon’s vast trove of shopping, browsing and streaming signals, allowing advertisers to move beyond blunt reach metrics to campaigns designed around real customer behaviour.
“The future of advertising is not about reaching more people, but the right people with messages that resonate,” said Amazon Ads India head and vice president Girish Prabhu. “By combining AI with deep customer insights, we help brands move from broadcasting campaigns to having meaningful conversations wherever audiences spend their time.”
One of the biggest changes, according to Amazon Ads, will be the collapse of the wall between media planning and creative development. Retail media, powered by first-party data, is increasingly shaping everything from brand discovery to final purchase, pushing marketers to design campaigns around audience insight rather than internal instinct.
AI is also moving from a support tool to a creative engine. Agentic AI, which automates and accelerates production, is expected to make high-quality creative accessible even to small businesses, compressing weeks of work into hours and giving challengers the ability to compete with larger brands on speed and scale.
Behind the scenes, AI-driven analytics will take on a bigger role in campaign optimisation, identifying patterns, spotting opportunities and recommending actions that would previously have required teams of analysts.
Streaming TV is another big battleground. With India’s video streaming audience now above 600 million and connected TV users at 129.2 million in 2025, advertisers are set to treat streaming not just as a branding channel but as a performance engine, measured increasingly by sales, sign-ups and bookings rather than just reach.
Finally, Amazon Ads sees creators and contextual advertising reshaping how brands tell stories. Creators will act less like influencers and more like long-term partners, while scene-aware ads on streaming platforms will allow brands to insert hyper-relevant offers into the flow of what viewers are watching.
Taken together, Amazon Ads argues, these shifts mark a move towards advertising that is both more human and more measurable, where AI handles the complexity, and creativity does the persuading.
