Ad Campaigns
adidas announces Mirabai Chanu as face of ‘Stay In Play’ campaign
Mumbai: Sportswear major adidas has announced Olympic medallist Mirabai Chanu as the face of its ‘Stay In Play’ campaign as it unveiled its latest product innovation designed to keep more menstruators in sport in a bid to tackle one of the greatest taboos faced by women in sports.
The brand’s new TechFit Period-Proof tights feature an absorbent layer to help protect against leaks when worn with a tampon or pad, giving women athletes the confidence to stay in play throughout their menstrual cycle, said adidas.
The sports brand found that teenage girls are dropping out of sport at an alarming rate, with one of the key reasons being fear of period leakage. Using these insights, adidas set out to create a product that helps athletes stay in sport throughout their cycle by giving them an added layer of protection.
Talking about the new campaign launch, adidas – India senior director, Sunil Gupta said, “It is our commitment to revolutionise our product offering and services to better support the needs of our diverse women community. Our ambition with this product is to keep women in sport by giving them the confidence to train during their period.”
Excited about the launch campaign, Mirabai said, “I am thrilled to see the products which will help girls break barriers and be in action. The desire to stay in play no matter what the situation has always been my priority. Seeing these product innovations from adidas, I feel confident that we will help girls all over the world to stay in sport.”
After over two years of development and rigorous testing carried out at each stage of the journey, the TechFit Period-Proof tights were developed using new adidas Flow Shield technology, with the aim to give athletes added confidence whilst training through their period. A wicking layer, absorbing layer and leakproof layer work together to provide protection, whilst a bonding frame holds each layer together and keeps the tights in place, the brand said in a statement.
The collection is made available in India from 15 August on adidas website and select brand stores.
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.
