Ad Campaigns
IPL7 campaign: Chalo bulaava aaya hai
MUMBAI: Remember the movie Exorcism? The same will happen to the whole country when the “bhoot” of cricket will enter the minds and hearts of the countrymen and women and children!
If we go by the latest campaign, the IPL-loving “bhoot” in all of us has to wake up.
The seventh season of Indian Premiere League (IPL) which will be aired on Sony Max has begun its promotion.
As part of the excitement, the channel has started engaging people through e-mailers, social media and radio wherein the buzz was created with ‘sabse bada bulaava aa raha hai’ campaign.
RJs “prepared” people for an impending major announcement to be made soon while SMSes informed people to stand-guard as a bulaava will soon come for them.
Today, the channel revealed the two TVCs on youtube. “From tomorrow, the TVCs will go on air on all the channels of our network,” informs Sony Max marketing head Vaishali Sharma, who is happy with the response generated so far. “We have got responses through SMSes and on social media from people, cricket-lovers and it is overwhelming.”
The campaign conceptualised by Havas Media Worldwide is based on the thought that one has to come when the IPL calls. Unlike last year, this year the campaign will feature aam aadmi and not a popular face in Farah Khan which was used in season six campaigns by the channel.
Nonetheless, staying true to its filmy style, the two TVCs are melodramatic and showcase how in the country where cricket is like a religion, everything else is forgotten when one hears the so-familiar IPL tune.
The concept was chosen after various meetings between the various stakeholders with the focal point being entertainment. “It is as if you cannot refuse a call from the god. In the same way, when IPL calls, you have to be there,” is how Sony MAX and Sony MIX executive vice president and business head Neeraj Vyas had explained the thought behind the campaign for IPL7 to indiantelevision.com in an interaction last month.
The tournament which will commence on 16 April and end on 1 June has already made headlines. Till a couple of days back, nobody knew where the matches will be played? Since the tournament clashes with the general elections, it will be now played the in UAE, probably some matches in Bangladesh and the matches after counting of votes on May 16 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.
