Ad Campaigns
Brands kick off holiday ads way before Christmas
MUMBAI: A famous quote in advertising correctly justifies the medium – ‘Creativity without strategy is called art, creative with strategy is called advertising’.
It does stand true as advertising is creatively conveying your message to the viewers. Ad folk are obsessed with creativity which brings out the best in agencies that end up becoming memorable.
With holiday season around the corner, brands world over are pulling up their socks (did we hear Santa?). Holidays also give the audience more time to watch the ads as people tend to sit back, relax and enjoy some “me-time” by watching television or browsing social media platforms. Holiday ads are also significant as people tend to shop and splurge on gifts for family and friends around Christmas and New Year.
In our constant endeavour to bring forth interesting content to our readers, Indiantelevision.com has commenced a new weekly series, wherein we would showcase prominent international campaigns of the week that went by.
To kickstart the holiday season, we list down some of the most creative campaigns around the world this week. We are sure that these ads will get you in holiday mood ahead of time.
LEGO Australia Christmas ad:
Lego Australia created a stop-motion animation about a Lego Santa finding his way home to save Christmas, thanks to a surprise help from a spirited stranger, Sensei Wu. The campaign is a delightful little story that perfectly illustrates the sort of elaborate world-building Lego toys foster and the imaginative play that can happen within the little universe. The campaign was created by CHE Proximity agency.
Apple Holiday ad:
Mobile giant Apple launched its holiday campaign called “Sway”. The ad features a brief appearance by the new iPhone X, but mostly revolves around AirPods and sharing an experience with music with someone special. The protagonist runs into a guy, imagines sharing an AirPod with him and the two fall in love before returning to reality where they pass by each other in the street.
Heathrow bears Christmas ad:
In the latest campaign by London’s Heathrow airport, much loved teddy bears Mr and Mrs Blair make a comeback to celebrate Christmas. During the two-minute video for Britain’s biggest airport, the emotional story follows the married couple from 1967 to the present day over the decades, as they longingly wait for each other in arrivals. The ad has been produced by Heathrow airport and is sure to make you teary-eyed.
Otto retail Christmas ad:
The short film revolves around the tale of a trapped Bolivian traveller to inspire togetherness in Christmas. Produced by BIGFISH, the campaign aims to get us into the spirit of Christmas regardless of where we are.
McDonald’s reindeer ad:
McDonald’s has come up with an ‘awee-worthy’ ad this holiday season that talks about the tradition of leaving a gift for reindeers on Christmas for their hard work. The campaign conceptualised by Leo Burnett is part of McDonald’s #ReindeerReady Christmas menu.
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.
