Ad Campaigns
Moving campaign by Digital L&K Saatchi & Saatchi draws attention to flaws in civic amenities
MUMBAI: A new digital campaign. The Boy Who Will Not Stand for The National Anthem, has been conceptualized by digital L&K Saatchi & Saatchi in association with Mumbai based NGO Free A Billion to highlight apathy towards basic civil rights.
The campaign comprises a short video about 16-year old Prakash who lost his life last year because of a pothole. The video has managed to attract eyeballs on merit of its unique title message.
“Free A Billion approached us with a clearly defined problem of basic civil rights. We all face these issues in our day-to-day lives but more often than not fail to pay heed. We wanted this to become a peoples’ movement and therefore it was imperative to tell a true story. The campaign is not just meant for shares and hits but to give every Mumbaikar a reality check, one that would appeal to his conscience and drive him to take action”, said Digital L&K | Saatchi & Saatchi associate director planning and strategy Aarti Samant.
The aim of the NGO is to mobilise the Municipal Corporation, the State Government and the Central Government into taking action to halt the rapid decay of the city and turn India’s commercial capital into the city it should be.
The film ends by urging citizens to unite and vote and therefore take the first step towards bringing positive change to Mumbai and its infrastructure. For this purpose, the two organisations got in touch with Mr and Mrs Bilhore, the parents of Prakash via a simple, but hard hitting video.
Digital L&K | Saatchi & Saatchi associate creative director Anoorupa Bose said, “This Independence Day, when people stand up for the national anthem, we wanted them to remember victims like Prakash who would not be standing with us. To realise that it’s not just government inefficiency, but our indifference that contributes to our broken system.”
“We were very clear that we needed to be sensitive, not sensational. With communication like this, it’s easy to make it unnecessarily dramatic and emotional. We didn’t need to. The theme and the story of Prakash was emotional enough. We were glad his parents actually held themselves together on this emotional shoot without breaking down like they did the previous day. In the end, we do hope we’ve helped in some small way to move people into action,” added DigitalL&K | Saatchi & Saatchi national creative director Charles Victor.
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.
