Ad Campaigns
IKEA gives ‘voice’ to products in latest campaign
MUMBAI: The IKEA store launch in Hitec City, Hyderabad, has been one of the most talked about launches in recent times. A much-anticipated event, the store launch was preceded by the brand’s first ever communication for the Indian market, created by Dentsu Impact – the creative agency from the Dentsu Aegis Network. The launch also saw some interesting on-ground activations that got people talking.
One may think that such a high impact launch would be followed by a period of quiet from the brand. But not so in the case of IKEA. The brand has now released a series of new films on TV and digital to bring to life some hero products from the brand. Quite literally! Every film has one main hero – an IKEA product itself, and well it is this hero that does all the talking. The treatment is a completely fresh one and the films are nothing like a typical product centric ad you may imagine. The films are all a part of a series and the team promises we will see something fresh in every film, with a different product playing a different character.
IKEA India country marketing manager Ulf Smedberg says, “We at IKEA saw the need early on to find an emotional connection with consumers and their future relationship with our range. In order to de-dramatise and make parts of our range more attractive, inspiring yet even human, we created our new communication campaign which we internally call “Talking products”. In this series of short films, we let some iconic products speak and express their personality, in a fun and engaging way. The reaction so far been very positive, with people finding them to be surprising yet distinctively IKEA.”
Dentsu Impact senior vice president Megha Jain Sadhwani adds, “The reason why IKEA is the world’s most loved Swedish home furnishing brand is its products, they are the heroes that make this brand what it is. The intent behind this series of films is to introduce these heroes to the Indian audience in a typical IKEA style – simple and playful, and what better way to do this than to let the products do the talking themselves, literally!”
Dentsu Impact Bangalore creative head Amish Sabharwal spoke about the creative concept behind these films and said, “IKEA is known for great creative formats across the globe. This is our India attempt to add to that stellar reservoir. The products of IKEA are so intuitive, practical and magical that they deserve to be stars of every commercial, who needs celebrities?! That’s what we did. Each object has their own character, their own quirk, their own voice and they are unlike any other object you get in the market. The idea is to get audience to enjoy the storytelling and the magic of each product.”
The films have been released on TV in Hyderabad and are available on the IKEA Facebook page and Youtube.
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.
