Ad Campaigns
Barbie’s new campaign says ‘You can be anything’
MUMBAI: The iconic doll brand from the house of Mattel – Barbie, has release a campaign video in India called, 'You Can Be Anything,’ to inspire young girls in India to dream beyond limitations. The campaign celebrates the significance for young girls to have positive, strong role models that inspire them to believe that they can be anything.
With the belief of ‘You Can Be Anything’ philosophy, Barbie reached out to mothers across India to know what their daughters aspire to become when they grow up. The response was overwhelming, with about 1,000 moms sharing beautiful stories of their daughters. Barbie finally chose three girls with most inspiring stories and decided to fulfill their dreams of becoming a chef, a gymnast and a comedian. The perfect role models who were brought on board to mentor, motivate and inspire these young girls were: Commonwealth Games gymnast, Meghana Reddy; Chef at Flavour Diaries, Anjali Pathak and Entertainer Urooj Ashfaq.
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Barbie, along with these celebrated mentors created an intensive mentorship program, to help these girls overcome challenges, and accomplish infinite possibilities through hard work and dedication. This program was documented as a video by Barbie and released coinciding with International Day of the Girl Child, to encourage and motivate several other girls out there to conquer their dreams.
Speaking on the occasion, Mattel head of marketing Lokesh Kataria says, “We are delighted to celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child in India with the release of our campaign video. This campaign was conceptualised to encourage young minds through actual stories and highlight the significance of empowering role models. We have tried to depict the importance of appropriate guidance in nurturing dreams. We are hopeful that this initiative will encourage the next generation to believe in their dreams and have faith in their potential.”
Meghana Reddy, Commonwealth Games Gymnast: Telangana’s 19-year-old Meghana is India’s exclusive Olympic representative in gymnastics. She has been training under a former world champion in the US and UK for the last four years and has specialised in Rhythmic Gymnastics.
Anjali Pathak, Chef of Flavour Diaries: Anjali Pathak is a foodie, passionate chef and a teacher. She has been running the popular food studio Flavour Diaries in Mumbai for three years now, offering hands-on cooking classes using fresh local produce, spanning across the Mediterranean, European, American and Asian cuisines.
Urooj Ashfaq, Entertainer: The 22-year old is a writer and comedian working in Mumbai. She is one of the promising comedians in the circuit, who is known to be creating waves with her slick humor and cute face.
Mattel Toys has focused its efforts around the core philosophy of ‘Play with a purpose’ – where each toy developed by the global leader has an intrinsic benefit linked to it. For 59 years, Barbie has led girls on a path to self-discovery. After over 180 inspirational careers and diverse range of collectibles, Barbie—along with her friends and family—continues to inspire and encourage the next generation of girls that they can be anything.
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.
