Ad Campaigns
Cello shows that encouragement works better than pressure
MUMBAI: BIC Cello (India), India’s leading manufacturer of writing instruments has launched a short film aimed at illustrating the change of perception of parents in exam time after having taken the same exam themselves.
The short film commences by portraying a scenario on how parents unknowingly pressure their children to perform better. Cello is aware of the fact that this will only create more stress and anxiety in the child’s mind. To reveal this truth, Cello Pens has come up with their campaign, Surprise Test.
In this video, the parents of kids going to St Albertus High School are asked to take the same exam that their child is taking – 6th graders mid-term test. While taking the test, they experience the level of stress that their kids go through. They realise that their constant pressure on their kids to get good marks only leads to the creation of extra stress. The surprise test leads to a change in their perception and belief that encouragement works better.
The short film has been launched digitally and is created by J. Walter Thompson (JWT), Mumbai and directed by Abhishek Sengupta.
BIC Cello director of marketing CMO India Tanveer Khan says, “While setting expectations for their children’s sake, parents at times unknowingly put pressure on their kids before exams, adding to their overall stress. Cello Pens has come up with the ‘surprise test’ campaign to highlight the crucial role that parents play during exam time. Their encouraging words make a lot of difference and have a great impact on children’s minds and hearts. Encouragement boosts their confidence and helps the child perform better.”
This initiative is a part of Cello Exam Expert Series which is manufactured keeping in mind the comfort of the students using it. Cello Exam Expert Series (Maxriter, Pinpoint & Technotip) are designed to enable students to write for a longer time without pressure on their finger and wrist.
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.
