Ad Campaigns
Kingfisher bets on VR marketing with ‘KF 360 cities’
MUMBAI: With Facebook and Youtube going full throttle to maximise the reach of VR by encouraging 360 degree content on its platforms, it’s no surprise that several Indian brands are looking to make the most of it.
After Tata Motors, it’s now alco-bev giant Kingfisher’s turn to give a taste of Virtual Reality to its consumers with its latest campaign ‘KF 360 cities’ that allows users to have an immersive tour of major Indian cities. Apart from Samsung Gear and Google cardboard, one can experience the same by simply tilting their mobile phones while enjoying the 360 degree video on Youtube or Facebook.
“The ‘KF 360 cities’ campaign is the perfect opportunity to bring destinations to people instead of the other way around. Forget maps and GPS, and explore India like you’ve never done before. Whether it’s the backwaters of Kerala, the sand dunes of Jaisalmer or the beaches of Goa, Kingfisher will truly show you how to have a Good Time,” shared an excited United Breweries Limited marketing SVP Samar Singh Sheikhawat.
With a larger goal of showcasing how a fun time is incomplete without Kingfisher in any city, . Kingfisher has created this virtual reality campaign in association with Spectra VR, leveraging the growing popularity of VR headsets. While currently the VR experience is available for selected cities, Sheikhawat assured that over a period of time the brand will cover 30 to 40 cities through this campaign.
“We have been dabbling in VR at a smaller scale in varied so but now we are gathering steam and momentum when it comes to using VR technology in our marketing strategy,” informed Sheikhawat.
The brand’s previous campaigns in VR include Kingfisher Super Chasers VR Game, during the IPL season where the brand used VR gear to transport users into a virtual cricket stadium, giving them an immersive gaming experience. The game created a lot of fan frenzy during theKingfisher on-ground activations across the country, with even cricketers trying their hand at the game.
When asked if the limited accessibility of VR headgear would limit the reach of the campaign, Sheikhawat clarified saying, “That’s true of any new technology that comes in. And we believe that with spectrum and bandwidth increasing in the country, and technology companies like Samsung pushing the VR evolution from their end, it will only get better from here. It’s advantageous for the brand to be one of the early adopters of this really cool proposition in marketing. We are betting on it for sure.”
Sheikhawat admitted that there is a marginal difference between a regular and VR campaign when it comes to the initial investment, but that depends completely on the quality of the content, and the experience the brand offers, as same campaign could be enjoyed by using an expensive Samsung headgear or a free Youtube plugin.
While it is too early to say if the marketing predictors and marketing mojos are right about the the impending VR explosions in marketing, but for the time being brands such as Kingfisher are looking at it in a big way.
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.
