Ad Campaigns
Dulux launches new ad campaign featuring Farhan Akhtar
MUMBAI: AkzoNobel India’s decorative paints brand Dulux has launched its ‘Fashion Trends for Walls’ campaign for Dulux Velvet Touch.
The integrated campaign featuring brand ambassador Farhan Akhtar turns the spotlight on the brand’s ability to translate fashion on to walls. Dulux Velvet Touch’s Fashion Trends is an offering of high-end emulsions (decorative paints).
Explaining the rationale behind the brand campaign, AkzoNobel India Decorative Paints director Rajiv Rajgopal said, “Being an international premium brand with a distinct legacy and lineage, Dulux’s strengths resides in its immense understanding of colours and maintenance of high standards of quality. The new campaign bases its ideology on the brand’s best in class interior solutions that support customers in making their homes stylish.”
“With Dulux Velvet Touch being at the heart of the campaign, its brand ambassador, Farhan Akhtar has been featured who has given life to this television commercial. The TVC is strongly flanked by print and outdoor advertisement, and active engagement through digital touch points and in store solutions. As a brand ambassador, Farhan Akhtar embodies the Dulux Velvet Touch’s core position of self-expression and style,” he added.
Akhtar said, “I am very proud to continue my association with Dulux Velvet Touch, a brand that brings international appeal and offers best in class performance in interior solutions. Like the product, the new TVC of Dulux Velvet Touch is stylish and will appeal to the next generation of customers who are searching for ways to transform their living space into something that they are truly proud of. I personally had lot of fun working with the paint and the finished wall while making of this TVC.”
Taproot Dentsu Communications co-founder and CCO Agnallio Dias said, “The Fashion Trend for Walls campaign of Dulux Velvet Touch caters to an audience that is not afraid of flaunting style. Beyond the colours and vibrancy, there lies a hidden meaning in each colour at the core of Dulux. These colours define a person’s individuality and Dulux provides a medium of expression to these individuals. Just as fashionistas set trends in the world of fashion, Dulux Velvet Touch empowers consumers to discover their style and wearing it on their walls.”
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.
