Ad Campaigns
IDFC FIRST makes banking all about you
MUMBAI: Following the merger of IDFC Bank and Capital First, the financial institution created a new entity – IDFC FIRST Bank and a new brand proposition – #AlwaysYouFirst. To promote this new customer-first approach and its 7 per cent pa savings account, Interactive Avenues – a Reprise Network Company, which is the digital arm of IPG Mediabrands, took to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & YouTube to create an influencer marketing campaign.
In partnership with Mastra Media (influencer agency), Interactive Avenues roped in social influencers like Soha Ali Khan, Karan Kundrra, Anusha Dandekar, Mohsin Khan, Siddharth Nigam, Prince Narula and Harsha Bhogle to ensure the brand was always first in consumers’ minds. The agency supported several social conversations through interesting content around Game of Thrones (GoT), Avengers: Endgame & ICC World Cup 2019. The best traction was however received around the conversations on GoT.
A deep dive into our audience’s content consumption habits revealed a preference for entertainment/celebrity content. Capitalising on the growing trend of celeb reaction videos, #AlwaysYouFirst was promoted through India’s first-ever Television commercial (TVC)-reaction video series, featuring the influencers. The TVCs showed people putting the needs of others first and the influencers shared similar moments from their lives in the films. The series created a huge impact and consumers started sharing their own #AlwaysYouFirst stories.
In a bid to connect with the fans directly, Prince Narula took to the streets of Mumbai to do a vox pop that captured heart-warming stories of people in the maximum city.
In addition to this an intellectual property (IP) was created, a micro series called ‘Cricket First with Harsha Bhogle’, to leverage the conversations around ICC World Cup 2019. Through the micro series, hosted on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, fans got first-hand predictions and analysis of India matches. Harsha’s on-time and on-point predictions about Indian #GameChangers like Rohit Sharma and Yuzvendra Chahal led to more fans tuning in. IA also ran a teaser poll called #HarshaAsks on social media to gauge fan opinions.
Talking about the campaign, Interactive Avenues (A Reprise Network Company) COO Shantanu Sirohi said, “IDFC FIRST Bank’s new brand ethos #AlwaysYouFirst is all about people. That’s why we created a people-powered approach in the campaign, that included influencer marketing & user generated content. It was the best way to amplify this message on social media. Getting celebrities and fans to share their #AlwaysYouFirst stories also helped create maximum impact around the brand message.”
Keeping customer experience at the heart of the campaign, IDFC FIRST Bank & Interactive Avenues was successful in making an impact with the #AlwaysYouFirst campaign.
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.
