Ad Campaigns
Dulux Weathershield celebrates Republic Day with #HomesOfTheBrave initiative
MUMBAI: On the occasion of India’s 70th Republic Day, Dulux Paints from the house of AkzoNobel, a leading paints and coatings company, launched the #HomesOfTheBrave initiative. The campaign aims to celebrate brave hearts of the Indian Armed Forces who leave their homes to protect ours.
The digital campaign #HomesOfTheBrave showcases the stories of two such personnel from the armed forces: Sumitra Devi, Assistant Sub-Inspector, CRPF; and Ajoy Kumar Rabha, Sipahi, CRPF.
The video campaign features Farhan Akhtar, the brand ambassador of Dulux. It highlights how the armed forces protect the country while staying away from their homes for extended periods of time. Through #Homesofthebrave, Dulux Weathershield initiated painting the homes of these heroes as a gesture of gratitude and a homecoming gift.
AkzoNobel India managing director Rajiv Rajgopal said, “The Indian Armed forces have valiantly stood at the borders through tough tides and extreme weather conditions to protect the nation. With Dulux Weathershield’s #Homesofthebrave, we want to celebrate and acknowledge these brave hearts and support them in protecting their homes from the forces of nature.”
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.
