Ad Campaigns
Aashirvaad Salt hits the streets with ‘Iodine ka Tilak’ and theatre on wheels
MUMBAI: As chants of “Jai Jagannath” echo through Odisha, ITC’s Aashirvaad Salt is mixing devotion with education—quite literally. In the second edition of its ‘Iodine Ka Tilak’ campaign, the brand is rolling out a Rath Yatra special with a new spin: Patha Nataka, or street theatre, to drive home the importance of iodine in everyday meals.
Performances by local artists—held across Puri, Bhubaneswar, Konark and Cuttack—tell a relatable tale: a worried mother, a struggling child, and a doctor’s advice to switch to iodised salt to prevent deficiency and boost brainpower. The message is clear: a smarter kitchen leads to smarter kids.
At the centre of the initiative is the now-familiar ritual of applying ‘Iodine ka Tilak’—a sandalwood paste laced with iodine tincture—on devotees’ foreheads, blending tradition with health science in a symbolic (and literal) dose of wellness.
ITC Ltd. COO, Staples & Adjacencies, Foods Division, Anuj Rustagi said, “With ‘Iodine Ka Tilak,’ we continue our mission to educate families about the risks of iodine deficiency. Iodized salt plays a crucial role in meeting the iodine required for brain development, especially for children. This year, through Patha Nataka, we are taking this vital message directly into communities, making it engaging, accessible, and deeply rooted in culture. Through this initiative, we hope to spark everyday action, one pinch at a time, with Aashirvaad Iodized Salt as the nutritional ally in every kitchen.”
The “theatre van” kicked off its tour in Bhubaneswar (27- 29 June, before stopping at Grand Road in Puri on June 30. Next stops: Konark (1 July) and Cuttack (2-5 July). Devotees attending the Rath Yatra between 27 June and 5 July continue to receive the iodine tilak, while families across Odisha are encouraged to take a health pledge—and add a pinch of purpose to every meal.
With a clever fusion of folk storytelling and functional messaging, Aashirvaad isn’t just salting your fries—it’s seasoning public health, one street at a time.
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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.
