Ad Campaigns
‘School Chale Hum’, Nestle prompts girls
MUMBAI: Nestle India has recreated the iconic song, School Chale Hum, originally produced by Bharatbala. Through this song, Nestle India aims to draw support towards the corporate social initiative, #EducateTheGiriChild in association with Nanhi Kali, one of the largest NGOs imparting education to underprivileged girl children across India.
School Chale Hum was initially composed in 2006 in support of the Indian government programme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and was produced by BharatBala Productions. ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’ aims at boosting the objective of universalisation of elementary education. However, the situation continues to be grim with 20 million girls still dropping out of school each year. Nestle India decided to bring some of the most renowned names in the industry to re-interpret the song to support girl child education.
The musical trio of Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy put together a new music composition along with lyricist Anvita Dutt and singer Harshdeep Kaur. Their intention has been to give the original composition, a new life. Young girls from the Nanhi Kali programme, the partners for this corporate initiative also participated by singing the song along with the lead singer.
Nestle India chairman and managing director Suresh Narayanan said, “Music is one of the most powerful and influential means of uniting people for a cause. This song represents the collective societal objective to spread awareness and evangelize support for the cause.” The composers team said, “Education is the way forward for progress.”
Bharat Bala said, “We need to do everything we can to make quality education an immediate reality for every girl child across the country. Let’s come together to give a voice to our youngest and most curious minds.”
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.
