Ad Campaigns
No more ‘Single Use Plastic’, says Usha International
MUMBAI: Usha International, one of India’s leading consumer durables companies, launched a new campaign for its water solutions that champions the cause of discontinuing single-use plastic. Plastic pollution is invading every part of the planet from mountains to the deep seas fast becoming one of the biggest environmental challenges the world over.
While you may think it’s just one bottle you have discarded, there lakhs of people who think similarly, and who are collectively responsible for the 25,000 tonnes of plastic generated in Indian every single day. What more, as much as 80 per cent of this is not recycled, and at least 40 per cent remains uncollected polluting waterways, choking drainage and river systems, littering the marine ecosystem causing unmitigated harm to it. Just to put that into perspective – one tonne of plastic means about 36000 half-liter bottles. So imagine how much plastic waste we create – almost a mini-mountain a day. In fact, the issue features high on prime minister Narendra Modi’s priorities, and he has urged the citizens to discontinue ‘single use plastics’.
Usha International president marketing Sandeep Tewari said, “As India’s leading brand, it is our responsibility to be invested in causes that impact our society. Through this film, we want to create awareness about the impact that single-use plastic bottles, we want people to be sensitized about the damage it causes, and hope that it evokes them to change their habits. We want people to be mindful of their plastic footprint, to be mindful of the needs of the planet by urging them to switch to sustainable alternative solutions. We want to appeal to people to fill their glasses with water from dispensers – shifting off plastic bottles of water. While offering a sustainable solution, the dispensers Usha offers also ensure hygiene and safety of drinking water.”
Raj Kaushal, the producer of the film, said, “I believe in the saying that – we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. This film is for my son Vir; hope we can make India free from single-use plastic.”
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.
