Ad Campaigns
Bad Man Gulshan Grover is back: Brings awareness to Tax Returns with Cleartax’s Campaign
Mumbai: Cleartax, India’s tax filing platform has joined hands with Swiggy Instamart to set up a quirky brand promotion by sending out dummy tax notices to its customers. This campaign is initiated to encourage them to grab discounts and offers during its ongoing campaign of the Big Filing Days to file their ITRs on time.
On ordering from Swiggy Instamart, Bangaloreans on 13 July got fake tax notices along with their grocery orders. The notice, when opened, had Bollywood’s Bad Man Gulshan Grover’s image printed on it with the message – ‘Not this time. Get a tax refund. Not a tax notice.’ The company informed that this campaign will be ongoing in Bangalore till 14th July and will reach 5lac households in a span of three days.
ClearTax spokesperson said, “Individuals and businesses usually rush to file their taxes by the end of the tax season which gets hectic for them, so this is a reminder for them to file it early while making it rewarding. Swiggy Instamart being an everyday delivery partner for most people, we couldn’t think of a better way to engage with consumers. Nonetheless, to say, Gulshan Grover’s Bad Man image and imagining ‘get a tax refund’ in his voice is confirmed to bring goosebumps to every 90s kid and also today’s taxpayers.”
Being handed a dummy Tax Notice by a delivery person was a highlight of the day for most of the individuals. The campaign has been effective as a cheeky way to get the message across while also reminding them about filing their taxes. Cleartax is currently running India’s Biggest Tax Filing Festival, Big Filing Days, during which it is offering up to 55 per cent off on its ITR filing plans. Apart from this, Cleartax has tied up with three popular brands, Ixigo, Yatra and Swiggy to offer assured rewards to every ITR filer between the 12 to 14 July.
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.
