Ad Campaigns
Green giants crowned at IAA Olive Crown Awards, sustainability gets the spotlight
MUMBAI: Mumbai’s glitterati gathered at the ITC Grand Central on 4 April for the 15th IAA Olive Crown Awards, where sustainability champions were given a right royal pat on the back. Forget your garden-variety awards show; this was a green jamboree, a veritable eco-extravaganza.
Packmate Grrreen LLP sprouted as “Green Brand of the Year,” proving they’re not just leafing around when it comes to eco-consciousness. RK Swamy reaped a harvest of four Olive Crowns, including “Green Agency of the Year,” showing it’s not just another agency, it’s a green machine.
Adani Enterprises Ltd and Ogilvy struck gold, bagging multiple awards, including the coveted “Corporate Crusader of the Year” for their campaign, “Pehle Pankha Aayega, Phir Bijli Aayegi” (“First the fan, then the electricity”). Turns out, the company is not just blowing hot air. Eastern Media Ltd and Reliance Foundation shared the “Green Campaign of the Year” gold, proving that when it comes to saving the planet, two’s company.
Dharmesh Barai, the man who makes mangroves look marvellous, was crowned “Green Crusader of the Year” for his Herculean efforts in cleaning up Maharashtra’s coastlines. He’s not just cleaning up, he’s cleaning up good. Earth Brigade Foundation bagged gold for “Green NGO of the Year,” proving it’s not consisting of just a bunch of tree-huggers, it’s making a real difference.
Rahul Narwekar, honourable speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly, graced the event, praising the IAA for their long-standing commitment to sustainability. “They took up this initiative when sustainability was perhaps not a known concept the way it is today,” he said, adding that the IAA has helped to drive the thought of sustainability through young minds, old minds and people at large.
IAA India chapter president Abhishek Karnani stated, “Sustainability is no longer a choice, it is a responsibility,” and that the IAA is heartened to see corporates, advertising agencies, and media houses doing the same.
Janak Sarda, chairperson of the IAA Olive Crown Awards, added, “It is our industry’s promise to be guardians of Brand Earth.”
A special award for “Best Continuing Effort” was given to The Bhamla Foundation and Hungama Digital Media for their “Bhoomi Namaskar” campaign, proving that consistency is key when it comes to saving the planet.
And for the IMC and IAA campaign, Ogilvy, with Rahul Rudra and Abhishek Kaddi’s “Pinky Promise” campaign, took home the win.
The event, a veritable who’s who of the advertising and marketing world, was sponsored by Deepak Builders & Developers, Blue Star Ltd, Mobligent Media, and Awardor. It was a night of green glory, where the planet was the real winner
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.
