Ad Campaigns
Intellectual property storm surrounds Jindal Steel’s Cannes Lions 2024 triumph
Mumbai: Jindal Steel’s success at Cannes Lions 2024 has been overshadowed by controversy as allegations of idea theft cloud its achievements. India’s medal count reached 9 by Day 2 of the festival, including 1 Gold, 2 Silver, and 6 Bronze Lions. Notably, two Lions were awarded to Jindal Steel for its campaign ‘The Steel of India,’ recognized in the Film Craft category with a Silver and a Bronze Lion from Earlyman Film.
Kondurkar Studios was credited with the campaign’s creative ideation, but the campaign’s origin came under scrutiny. Wieden + Kennedy India had initially developed the campaign titled ‘Steel of India,’ including its script, narrative flow, and montage video elements. They alleged copyright infringement and breach of service agreement when Jindal Steel launched a similar campaign in March 2024.
The Delhi high court intervened, acknowledging Wieden + Kennedy India as the campaign’s creators and ruled that Jindal Steel’s version prima facie appeared to be based substantially on their original theme. An out-of-court settlement affirmed Wieden + Kennedy India’s rights, despite industry norms where copyright typically transfers to the client upon payment.
Responding to these developments, Wieden + Kennedy India said, “While copyright legally transfers upon payment, the agency remains the ideal creator. The production house cannot unilaterally determine the origin of the idea once the court and client have decided.”
This situation has cast a shadow over Jindal Steel’s Cannes Lions wins, highlighting ongoing debates within the advertising industry regarding intellectual property and creative ownership.
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.
