Ad Campaigns
Wash United & Happy mcgarrybowen unite to bring about a change in social attitude
MUMBAI: Wash United, an international non-profit organization and the initiator of the Menstrual Hygiene Day on 28 May, joined forces with Happy mcgarrybowen, the creative agency from Dentsu Aegis Network, to create a digital-first awareness campaign in order to tear down walls of silence and stigma that surround menstruation.
Wash United collaborated with spoken word artist Aranya Johar to create a compelling video called ‘To bleed without Violence’ along with Happy mcgarrybowen. The video features Aranya talking positively about the stigma around menstruation.
Wash United managing director Nirmala Nair said, “Menstruation is a normal biological process. How is it possible that we cannot talk openly about something that is perfectly natural and without which none of us would exist? At Wash United, we constantly look for innovative solutions to create a positive shift in knowledge, attitude and behaviour and this campaign was one such effort. The campaign has sparked a conversation around the issue that has been much hushed about.”
Happy mcgarrybowen MD and CCO PM Praveen Das commented, “I believe that the businesses we run are inextricably linked to the social-economic environments in which they function. Our firm belief in the merit of design thinking and problem solving around social causes has led us at Happy mcgarrybowen to set up an exclusive division for Social Behaviour Change Communication. This team currently focusses on initiatives for international NGOs such as Wash United, Swachh Bharat and Worldreader’s readtokids.com to name a few. We look forward to partnering with such organisations to create impactful programmes like we did for ‘Menstrual Hygiene Day’, in order to highlight the importance of such issues.”
‘To bleed without Violence’ went viral with 7.5 million views, in addition to being shared by Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar in just four days. However, the true measure of success for this campaign was when the audience walked away educated and empathetic towards menstruation
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.
