Ad Campaigns
Shah Rukh Khan likely to feature in West Bengal tourism’s new TVC
KOLKATA: Bollywood superstar and Indian Premiere League’s (IPL) Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) franchise owner Shah Rukh Khan is likely to feature in the forthcoming new tourism television campaign for West Bengal. It is learnt that the new TVC will be ready in three months.
The state government has given the brand-building exercise to Ogilvy & Mather. Additionally, a global consultant – HVS – has also been hired to help prepare a ‘Vision Document’ for the state.
Fairly large contingents from the UK, Australia, Thailand and Sri Lanka will gather at the CII-organised Destination East, the largest buyer-seller tourism meet billed for 6-7 February at Town Hall, Kolkata’s heritage showpiece. More than 25 countries are likely to participate in Destination East.
These four countries are among a total of 25, including the US, China, France Germany, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan and Bangladesh from which tourism stakeholders will interact with their counterparts in the eastern region.
“This is a forum where we wish to share with the global delegates our incentive schemes for any investor keen to put money in tourism projects in the State,” said state’s Principal Secretary of the tourism department AR Bardhan.
“We will offer cash-based incentives on projects,” said Bardhan.
“We are going on a major brand-building exercise. O&M, has been hired to do the job. Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan is likely to feature in the forthcoming new tourism television campaign for West Bengal,” he said, adding that the new TVC will be ready in three months.
He also disclosed that the state government will build motel-cum-wayside facilities every 30 km along the routes to major tourism destinations, including the Sunderbans and Digha. “This will be a reality in six months’ time. A global consultant called HVS has been hired to help prepare a comprehensive Vision Document for West Bengal,” he said.
HVS has provided consulting services and solutions to more than 60 countries for hotels, shared ownership and leisure assets.
“The 10-year Vision Document seeks to double the growth of five per cent in inward tourist flow from both domestic market and international countries,” he added.
“Efforts are on to showcase Kolkata as the ‘Cultural Capital’ and MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conference and Exhibition) destination. One of our objectives is also to enable one to drive to Sunderbans within two hours from Kolkata at a speed of 80 kmph,” he added.
Apeejay Surendra Park Hotels Ltd managing director Vijay Dewan added, “Considerable money and energy is being devoted to improving roads.”
Dewan also narrated how Destination East has evolved into a powerful platform in the past five years for domestic tourism stakeholders to promote West Bengal to the international travel fraternity. This initiative has been generating a fair amount of business over the past few years.
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.
