Ad Campaigns
Coca-Cola India Foundation recaps ‘Maidaan Saaf’ campaign in Puri
MUMBAI– The Coca-Cola India Foundation, Anandana has unveiled a new video spotlighting its recent Used PET Bottle-Free initiative. This initiative was part of the Maidaan Saaf campaign, which promotes responsible plastic waste collection, segregation, and recycling at various events. The effort was carried out in collaboration with Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, Puri Municipality, District Administration Puri, the Odisha Development Management Programme (ODMP), and the Y4D Foundation.
The newly released video highlights the on-ground activation that mobilized nearly 200 volunteers, deployed 200 dustbins, and installed 10 collection kiosks along the Yatra route. Featuring voices from Coca-Cola India, ODMP, and the Y4D Foundation, along with a Safai Saathi, the video underscores the importance of collective action in driving meaningful change.
“The recent Puri event brought with it immense scale, and the responsibility to manage its impact with care,” said Coca-Cola India and Southwest Asia Senior Director – ESG Value Creation & Commercialisation, Saloni Goel. “Every element of this initiative was designed in alignment with the city’s needs and built on the principle of collective action. This was an opportunity to contribute to the larger purpose, and to do it with intent.”
Odisha Development Management Programme (ODMP) vice chairman Pradeep Kumar added, “This year, just like the last, we witnessed even better cooperation from the government and the municipality. The Safai Sathis we engaged experienced economic development, having gained employment during the Puri event.”
“This kind of awareness initiative went beyond just speeches or pamphlets, we implemented a mechanism on the ground,” said Y4D Foundation president Praful Nikam. “With dedicated cleanliness drives, daily waste collection, and motivating engaging the public and managing waste, we were able to create a system that was both sustainable and impactful.”
“When we cleaned up the waste, others noticed and followed,” said Shantilika Pradhan, a Safai Saathi engaged in the initiative. “People saw us using the dustbins which motivated them to do the same. That’s how change began, by setting an example.”
These collective efforts reflect a shared responsibility to environmental stewardship and demonstrate how collaboration between civic bodies, corporate partners, and local communities can drive meaningful change.
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.
