Ad Campaigns
A Cut Above: IAF releases Grey campaign
MUMBAI: It will instill a patriotic fervour. Grey group India has conceptualized and executed a new campaign for the Indian Air Force. The campaign ‘A Cut Above’ tries to bring forth the glory and bravado associated in the life of the Indian Air Force on the momentous occasion of the force’s 84th anniversary.
The communication exercise that kicked off with television commercials, also comprises 10 radio spots, over 20 press ads and 40 hoardings that will be spread across different media.
The Indian Air Force is not an average 9 to 5 desk job. It exceeds the realms of a job and offers a distinct lifestyle. The idea of the campaign is based on a simple human insight. There is an innate wanderlust in every one of doing new things, a quest for knowledge, exploring new places or meeting new people and a need to get more out of different aspects of life. The campaign aims to motivate the youth to join the Indian Air Force family and be ‘A Cut Above’ from the potential derived from the regular job.
“Shot across the country, over a gruelling 2 month schedule, the campaign shows how a position in the Indian Air Force is a cut above the same experience in a regular day job. Here, ambition goes beyond a corner office on the top floor. Colleagues don’t just share food, they share fate. A job in the Indian Air Force is an opportunity to do everything, except, only better,” said Grey group India executive creative director Varun Goswami.
Grey group India (Delhi) senior vice president and office head, Samir Datar, said, “Indian Air Force has always been an aspiration for those who want to join the armed forces. But, for a while now, the interest has been waning. This campaign aims to attract even those who have stopped looking at the armed forces and Indian Air Force as a career option. “A Cut Above” demonstrates that it takes a very special person to be part of Indian Air Force.”
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.
