Ad Campaigns
Brook Bond’s Taj Mahal chai’s graceful tribute to Zakir Hussain
MUMBAI: Brand marketers and ad agency creatives as well as music maestros and music fans stand up and applaud for this one. And the folks at Hindustan Unilever’s Brook Bond – as well as the agency and copy writer who has written this specific ad – you can take a bow.
Today morning’s Times of India’s Bengaluru edition of the newspaper’s front page pays a tribute to the great Zakir Hussain who passed away on 15 December. The ad has no visuals, just a ombre blue Prussian blue background.
It’s the word that touch your heart and stir your emotions just like Zakirbhai did in the commercials for Taj Mahal chai and his “Wah Taj boliye” parting shot in the commercials.
The copy goes: “Ask a billion Indians what comes to mind when they hear Taj Mahal Tea. It’s not The Taj Mahal. It’s you Ustad.”
In tiny font size, the brand then expresses its gratitude to the globally famous tabla genius: “Thank you for all the years of a beautiful partnership.”
And it signs off with a tiny logo of the Taj Mala brand.
All we at indiantelevision.com can say is “Wah Taj! Very gracefully done.”
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.
