Ad Campaigns
Hike unveils ‘No Formality’ campaign for Diwali
MUMBAI: Hike Messenger, India’s homegrown messaging platform, has announced the launch of its new marketing campaign “No Formality.”
According to a Hike spokesperson, “No Formality is a way of life that emphasises that you should simply be yourself without any formalities or pretence – a way of celebrating traditions without formality.” He further added,“It is about accepting that we all need to treat each other as equals in a fun and easy manner. And ‘No Formality’ is an expression of that spirit. ‘No Formality’ cuts across culture, language, and geographies and is a reflection of our society.”
The campaign kicked off with one and there would three three films. The campaign will run till December on digital, social and traditional media. It will be available in five languages – Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil across 16 states.
In the countdown to Diwali, the campaign highlights scenarios related to the festival. For instance, the homecoming film is based on the fact that Diwali is usually celebrated with family.
Even if someone does not want to go back but wants to spend it with his or her friends, tradition demands you have to go back home. The campaign of Hike, investors of which include Tencent, Foxconn, Tiger Global, Softbank and Bharti, will be amplified across social channels using #NoFormality.
The homecoming film shows a young boy travelling back home for Diwali and there is an entire build-up of emotion as it shows him on the journey back home. But, there is a complete anti-climax when he reaches home: The Homecoming.
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.
