Ad Campaigns
‘Diwali Desi Delights’ campaign urges India to embrace sweets over chocolates
Mumbai: This Diwali, the Indian Sellers Collective (ISC), an alliance of trade associations and sellers across India, has launched the ‘Diwali Desi Delights’ campaign, advocating for traditional Indian sweets and snacks over western-style chocolates and cakes. Embracing prime minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Vocal for Local’ initiative, the campaign seeks to revive cultural heritage by celebrating the rich flavors of rasgullas, matthis, laddoos, and other native delights, aiming to forge a stronger connection with local traditions.
Launched across digital platforms, ‘Diwali Desi Delights’ targets younger generations, inviting them to rediscover the significance of Indian sweets during the festive season. The campaign emphasises the health benefits of Indian treats, filled with ingredients like cashews, almonds, pistachios, and jaggery, highlighting them as wholesome alternatives to imported sweets laden with refined sugars and artificial ingredients.
In addition to promoting traditional delicacies, ISC criticises foreign food corporations and organisations, including the World Health Organisation (WHO), for influencing Indian food choices to expand their market reach. Indian Sellers Collective, national coordinator, Abhay Raj Mishra explains, “Amidst the festive cheer, we urge our fellow citizens to include only Indian sweets and delicacies as part of their celebrations. A festival like Diwali provides the perfect opportunity to celebrate and showcase our rich food culture and heritage, safeguarding it against the encroachment by foreign foods. We must challenge the introduction of regulations like FOPNL, which aim to present foreign foods as healthier than traditional Indian foods. Our culinary heritage deserves to be celebrated and protected. So this festive season, let’s trend #DiwaliDesiDelights.”
ISC also warns that multinational corporations are leveraging Front-of-Pack Nutrition Labelling (FOPNL) guidelines to sway Indian food preferences by positioning their products as healthier options. According to ISC, a recent study using the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) star rating method revealed flaws in rating traditional Indian foods, reinforcing ISC’s stance that FOPNL may disrupt time-honored culinary customs and impact the cultural landscape.
By championing Diwali Desi Delights, ISC aims to ensure that this Diwali and beyond, Indians take pride in their culinary roots, preserving traditions for future generations to cherish.
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.
