Ad Campaigns
Coca-Cola India’s ‘Ummeedo Wali Dhoop’ salutes positivity, togetherness and generosity of the human spirit
New Delhi: Celebrating the ability of human spirit to persevere and to always emerge stronger, Coca-Cola India has released a series of stories narrated through the digital medium as short films, static posts on its social assets and long format stories on Coca-Cola India Journey titled ‘Ummeedo Wali Dhoop’, recognizing beacons of hope, countless acts of selflessness, kindness and courage. The campaign features stories of everyday heroes who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help the community amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
Shrenik Dasani, Vice President – Sparkling Category, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia said, “At a time when the human spirit is being tested like never before, this was our attempt to share an inspiring, optimistic message with people and collectively reaffirm our unshakeable faith in the resilience and power of the human spirit.
In equal measure, the campaign is a small expression of our gratitude to all those individuals, who acted as living proof of that resilience, when they went above and beyond what was expected and rose up in aid of their fellow human beings in a time of great need.”
The campaign titled #ToTheHumanRace, offers an ode to humanity and the human spirit in these challenging times. In the first phase of the campaign, the company had released an inspiring film saluting the generosity and courage of the everyday heroes ‘Ummeedo Wali Dhoop’. The anthem has been written by Prasoon Joshi, CEO of McCann World group India and Chairman (Asia Pacific). The now released stories are an extension of the campaign which features ‘heroes’ from across the country and various walks of life.
Meet our heroes:
Bilal Khan, a 29-year old lawyer from Delhi is ensuring slum dwellers do not go hungry through his ‘Four for All’ initiative in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chhayarani Sahu, a 57-year-old farmer in Bhadrak district of Odisha has been distributing vegetables from her farm to nearby villages, sharing her abundance with many during the countrywide lockdown.
Click here to read her story
P Naveenkumar, a 26-year-old social worker from Munsiyari in Tamil Nadu is doing his bit by distributing food, water and providing other forms of assistance to street dwellers during the pandemic, through his NGO Atchayam. His work is a great example of starting at grassroot level and influencing a larger cause.
Click here to read his story
Supratik Chhaperia, a 25-year-old owns a designer cake shop in South Delhi. When the lockdown was announced in March, like for countless others, his world went topsy-turvy as operations shut down abruptly. His immediate thought however was not about his business, but to reach out to alleviate the distress of daily wage workers, the community hit the hardest during this period.
Click here to read his story
S. Veena, a transgender from Bengaluru is reaching out to transgenders, single women, and widows during the lockdown. Till now, she has distributed about 10,000 kilograms of rations.
Click here to read her story
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.
