Ad Campaigns
Philips India sparks off Diwali festivities
MUMBAI: Philips, a leading player in the consumer electronics segment, has launched a campaign for the festive season titled Khushiyon ki Ladi.
Traditionally, the brand has been a key advertiser during this period because people love to upgrade their homes with electronic devices. A large chunk of people wait for the festive season to buy new goods because they get great discounts, which adds to their celebrations.
The marketing objective of Philips is to revive the spirit of celebration this Diwali, and as a result revive people’s need to make a purchase for their home.
Conceptualised by Ogilvy, the film talks about how each one of us can ignite a Khushiyon ki Ladi or string of happiness. The film illustrates how joy and prosperity can trickle down from one family to another this Diwali – all triggered by one single purchase. Besides film, the campaign extends to other media like Instagram stories, carousels, print and point-of-sale.
The key challenge was to devise a festive campaign keeping in mind the sensitivity of the time. The country is still very much in the middle of the pandemic and an economic crisis. Full blown celebrations are not expected as these have limitations and challenges. Therefore, people are not yet ready to celebrate in a full-blown manner.
The agency shares that when it sat down to think on the communication strategy, it realised that the power to evoke joy and reinvigorate the economy lies in the hands of a single individual. Any purchase made, no matter how big or small, can help make someone else’s Diwali. This becomes especially relevant in the context of India slowly opening up post-lockdown.
Ogilvy (north), chief creative officer, Ritu Sharda said, “We’re all expecting Diwali to be a little different this year, but we’re hoping something will still spark that infectious festive spirit. In some way or the other, we will all celebrate Diwali together. So, we thought why don’t we light a ladi this year, a slightly different one, but one that involves everyone. The beauty is that any one person can spark off this Khushiyon ki Ladi, a ladi that quietly but surely, spreads joy from one home to another.”
It will be interesting to see how the festive season pans out for the consumer electronics segment.
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.
