Ad Campaigns
BBH: Why stereotype beauty
Mumbai: Nihar Naturals Coconut Hair Oil, the market leader in east India, launched its latest campaign challenging the culture of beauty stereotyping ingrained in society.
Women are often subjected to perceptions of being ‘more capable’ or ‘less capable’ based on their physical appearance and their choice of hairstyle. Nihar Naturals has always been at the forefront of challenging stereotypes. In 2015, Nihar partnered with Neilson to launch a nationwide study #IAMCapable, to build awareness amongst women about this culture of beauty stereotyping. The report drew attention to the biases faced by Indian Women today – 64% of Indian Women have agreed that judgements passed on them has affected their ability to reach their true potential.
BBH has conceptualised the campaign, which reiterates Nihar Natural’s brand purpose & takes the conversation a notch higher. Featuring long-term brand ambassador Vidya Balan, the campaign drives a strong message that a woman’s capability should not be judged based on the choice of her hair style. It goes on to state that beautiful hair is not a sign of capability, it is only a sign of a potent hair oil.
Marico Limited CMO Anuradha Aggarwal said, “Over the years Nihar Naturals through its various campaigns has communicated that a woman’s hair cannot be a parameter of judging her or her capability in anyway. This year’s campaign talks about how ‘Beautiful hair is not a sign of a woman’s capability, it is only a sign of a potent hair oil.’”
Vidya Balan added “This film through different creative sequences beautifully tries breaking yet another stereotype of judging women and their professions basis their hairstyles.”
BBH India CEO & managing partner Subhash Kamath said, “Nihar Naturals’ hair care category is a very competitive and cluttered one. So it’s quite a challenge to create a differentiated brand idea.”
BBH India executive creative director Rajesh Mani added, “Nihar Naturals has, over the years, taken a humorous dig at societal judgements on women’s hair and equating it with their capability. So the TVC is like a playful theatre of the absurd. The photo studio and the changing of backgrounds according to a woman’s hair style bring about the subconscious judgements that people make about women.”
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.
