Ad Campaigns
Eeksaurus bags first ever award for India at Annecy
MUMBAI: In a first for India at Annecy, France’s International Animation Film Festival, Eeksaurus has bagged the Annecy Cristal Award in the Commissioned Film Category for its film on child labour for Rotary International titled ‘Fateline’.
The jury at Annecy was mighty impressed with the campaign calling it a film that was a fantastic mix of technique and aesthetics, a kind they had never seen before. The festival received a total of 2,604 films from 95 countries this year, of which 199 films made the official selection.
The campaign which is based on the concept of a young child labourer determined to break free from the bonds that hold him down, is a simple yet effective rendition of how the impossible can be made possible when people join hands in working towards a cause. Working with the team of JWT, Eeksaurus had outlined the hands of the palm drawing in from the concept of fate or haath ke lakeer combined with the use of strong imagery and music to lay emphasis on the sensitivity of the situation.
Eeksaurus founder and creative director Suresh Eriyat said, “This is the first time ever that any ad campaign from India has won at this prestigious festival which is a matter of great pride. We thank all those who have put in tremendous efforts to bring this campaign to life especially our fantastic in-house team of animators, Rajat and Taufiq, Chester, Arun Crasto and the lovely children from Govandi who lent the soul to this film. The core ethos of this campaign was to reach out to the masses hence no caste, gender or creed was highlighted which has been possible through the use of 2D animation in the film. It is extremely heartening to be recognised for your work at Annecy which gives us a tremendous boost to further explore the scope of animation in India.”
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.
