Ad Campaigns
Manchester United partners with Vivify Stories for their latest #ILOVEUNITED campaign
Mumbai: Manchester United, the iconic football club, recently brought its globally celebrated fan event, #ILOVEUNITED, to Mumbai in an exhilarating opportunity with Vivify Stories, a leading creative production and technology solutions provider. The event took place at Mahalaxmi Race Course, Mumbai on Saturday 9 March 2024, transforming the vibrant City of Dreams into a hub of football fervor. Vivify Stories has done many FIFA World Cup trophy tours previously and has always been dedicated to enhancing fan experiences.
#ILOVEUNITED Mumbai surpassed traditional celebrations, offering a three-week extravaganza dedicated to strengthening the bond between Manchester United and its passionate fan base in India. Specially curated content across various club channels showcased first-team stars, club legends, and dedicated fans, amplifying the excitement leading up to the main event.
The gates opened at 15:00 IST allowing fans to immerse themselves in the full match day experience in the build-up to the kick-off at 18:00 IST.
The highlight of the evening was the live match screening hosted by Manchester United legends Denis Irwin and Wes Brown. Thousands of fans gathered at The Royal Western India Turf Club for a unique and immersive matchday experience, witnessing the exhilarating Premier League clash against Everton at Old Trafford.
Attendees not only enjoyed the live match screening but also immersed themselves in the magic of Old Trafford on the big screen. Interactive games, giveaways, and photo opportunities further deepened the connection between fans and the club they passionately support.
Vivify Stories founder and director Vikram Bhalla expressed his excitement about the opportunity, stating, ‘’At Vivify Stories, we’re dedicated to enhancing fan experiences by delivering an international quality event. We have done this for Manchester United for over a decade and across multiple countries in Asia and we have gotten better year after year both in terms of scale as well as the quality delivered. We aim to help our client engage with the fans, deepen connections, and ignite the shared love for football in every attendee.”
This event marked the eighth occurrence of #ILOVEUNITED in India, triumphantly returning to Mumbai after a successful 2018 event in Kolkata, where over 7,000 fans gathered for an unforgettable evening with Wes Brown and Mikael Silvestre.
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.
