Ad Campaigns
Ogilvy turns Durga Puja into a brand laboratory for its clients
KOLKATA: Forget garish hoardings and booming Shubho Sharodiya messages. Ogilvy East has spent a decade transforming Durga Puja advertising from noise into culture—and this year’s crop of campaigns shows why the approach works.
The star turn came from Coca-Cola, which wove a sari from recycled red and white PET bottles. Not just any sari, but the iconic Lal Paar—spun into thread by master weavers in Phulia and block-printed with Coke’s contour design. Launched at the 75th Ballygunge Cultural Pujo, it became an instant ritual companion, from Sindoor Khela to Instagram feeds. Sustainability met tradition, and the sari didn’t just trend—it became part of the festival itself.
Eveready Ultima built Asia’s largest toy truck, powered entirely by AA batteries and certified by the Asia and India Book of Records. It carried the idol of Ma Durga to Vikramshila, an NGO for children. Whilst giant idols on giant trucks usually hog attention, this tiny battery-powered bahon lit up hearts instead.
“At Eveready, we’ve always believed in using the powerful platform of Durga Pujo for good,” said Eveready Industries India chief executive Anirban Banerjee. “This year we’re focusing on pure joy. With Ultima Bahon, we’re bringing smiles and a memorable experience directly to underprivileged children at Vikramshila.”
Asian Paints Sharad Samman rolled in on another disappearing Kolkata icon: the yellow taxi. Forty of them became moving installations, each symbolising a decade of the festival. Gattu, the brand’s beloved mascot, took a musical ride through four decades in a film stitched with genres from each era.
“Festivals are reflections of their times,” said Asian Paints managing director & chief executive Amit Syngle. “With Choltey Choltey Chollish, we wanted to mirror Kolkata’s journey and the way creativity, community and imagination have shaped Pujo across generations.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbcC58ggcGg
Nestlé Nangrow broke ground with the Junior Dhunuchi—a blue, smoke-emitting toy that let children join the traditional Dhunuchi naach. For generations, kids had been told “No fire. No smoke. No Dhunuchi.” Creativity flipped that script.
“The Dhunuchi activation was an endearing and out-of-the-box way of celebrating toddlerhood and parenting, elevated by the cultural significance of the Dhunuchi Naach,” said Nestlé marketing head for premium infant and toddler nutrition Mayank Raina.
Even Sunlight detergent found its space. In a festival where new clothes dominate, detergent usually sits out. Not this time. Sunlight launched a photosensitive pack that revealed vibrant alpona motifs when exposed to sunlight, turning a functional product into a festive artefact.
The pattern is clear. Ogilvy East doesn’t interrupt Pujo—it interprets it and becomes part of it. Previous campaigns turned queuing into a refreshing experience for Coke and built Eveready’s Light Idol from torch beams.
“Durga Puja is the crowning jewel of Bengal’s culture,” said Ogilvy North chief creative officer Sujoy Roy, who leads the east initiative. “Advertising has no business being a noisy gate-crasher. It has to earn its invitation. Ogilvy East keeps trying to make brands not just visible, but a meaningful part of the smiles, the stories and the rituals that define this festival.”
Ogilvy Mumbai executive vice-president and office leader at Ogilvy Kolkata Roshni Mohan said Pujo is a dynamic canvas and an annual invitation to innovate. “When creativity serves culture, it doesn’t just capture attention—it enriches the experience.”
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.
