Ad Campaigns
15 creative agencies bag top honour across 19 categories
Mumbai: The India Chapter of International Advertising Association (IAA) presented the eighth edition of its prestigious IndAA Awards on 1 September at a ceremony hosted at the Taj Lands End, Mumbai.
ABP Network and Sony Pictures Network were the co-partner while Network18 and Jio Cinema were the associate partners for the event.
The awards to honour real advertising that creatively cut through to the market before it could impress the all-client jury saw work by 15 creative agencies take the top honours across 18 product and service categories and one special category.
The awards saw 102 campaigns being shortlisted of which, by design, only one in each category was awarded. In case of close contests the jury awarded joint winners after much deliberation.
Among creative agencies, Leo Burnett, MullenLowe Lintas Group and Ogilvy won three IndIAA Awards each, representing the very best work in that category. BBDO, DDB Mudra and TBWA won two awards each.
Other creative agencies and creators to win an IndIAA Award were Grey Group, Kehat Kabira Pictures, McCann Worldgroup, Publicis Worldwide, Rediffusion, SG Media, Talented, The Script Room, The Womb and Tilt Brand Solutions.
Two HUL brands were among winners, in the Food & Beverage and Personal Care categories. HDFC Life won in Insurance while HDFC Mutual Fund won in Banking & Finance.
Jury chairman and Nestle India chairman & MD Suresh Narayanan said “In my fifth year as the jury chair, I feel intimately acquainted with this room and honoured to be among some of the greatest creative minds in the country- – advertising gurus, communication experts, and marketing wizards.
Narayana presented a short poem titled ‘Jury Chair ka Sambodhan,’ “a reflection of his five years in this esteemed role.” He then went on to recite a few lines of the same in Hindi which received a hearty applause from the audience.
IAA president Avinash Pandey sheds light on how the IndIAA Awards exemplify creative excellence and have set the gold standard for creative awards in India. He stated, “It’s been an intriguing year for arguably the most active industry association of its kind. We’ve demonstrated that our industry can be a catalyst for change, particularly in breaking gender bias. We celebrate the winners reflecting the growing synergy between associations and showcasing the remarkable impact of the communication industry. The positive feedback from young leaders has been heartening, and our industry’s enthusiasm for AdAsia remains strong. We’re organising a delegation led by Sam Balsara for AdAsia 23 in Seoul, the largest event of its kind in Asia.”
IAA IndIAA Awards chairman, Abhishek Karnani said, “IAA Awards are unique because you can’t “enter” them.” A group of seasoned journalists shortlisted 102 campaigns across 19 categories from over a thousand ads. This accomplishes two important goals- first, it ensures that only genuine work is presented to the jury, keeping scam ads at bay, second, it truly democratises the creative process by not charging an entry fee, making fundraising for this grand event a challenging task.”
He further said, what sets the IAA awards apart is that they are judged by senior marketers who own and invest in the brands. We showcase the transformative power of communication for our beloved country and society, embodying IAA’s unwavering belief in the ability of communication to drive change.
IAA honoured Ayushmann Khurrana as the “Most Disruptive Brand in Entertainment Industry”. On questioning his criteria while choosing a Brand, he replied, “I believe before taking on a brand it resonates with the credibility of my films. Credibility is everything. I think only going with commercials will be very myopic. My father once told me, ‘Goddess Saraswati comes before Goddess Lakshmi. I always go like that. If you earn respect, nothing like that.”
Speaking about being an outsider in Bollywood, he said that the first choice had to be truly different and clatter-breaking. “I’ll never get a second chance being an outsider. So it’s all about the choices you make eventually. Everybody is hard-working and talented. It’s the kind of opportunities you get and firmly success is nothing but when preparation meets opportunity,” he avers.
The Asian Federation of Advertising Associations (AFAA) felicitated the all-India winners of its maiden Changemakers For Good Awards at the IndIAA Awards 2023. These meaningful awards are to salute those individuals and companies in the communication space who have used their talent to make the world a better place.
The winners for the four categories were:
● Advertising (for transformational messages) – Lowe Lintas for their International Women’s Day 2022 entry.
● Government (for transformational messaging by a Government arm). –RK Swamy Associated for State Bank of India.
● Industry Leader (someone who led societal change in the last few years).- CVL Srinivas, Country Head, WPP Group.
● Innovation (where technology or approach made the difference) – Lowe Lintas for International Women’s Day 2022.
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.
