Ad Campaigns
PNB Housing Finance’s animated ad campaign a breakaway
Banks’ television commercials are known to depict various services in a staid, old-fashioned way, forsaking creativity for efficacy. Animation, however, is changing that.
The recent ads for PNB housing use the medium of animation to very interestingly explain the home loan services of the Punjab National Bank. The ads created by Mumbai-based 88 Pictures have one thing in common – the use of CGI animals.
Renowned ad film-maker Shantanu Baagchi approached the studio with an idea to create a high-end CGI project, which doesn’t necessarily look CGI. “We weren’t sure about it but when we looked at the concepts, it appealed to us,” said 88 Pictures founder-CEO Milind Shinde.
88 Pictures chief creative officer Philippe Gluckman explained, “The project allowed a really interesting characterisation of animals through animation. One of the challenges, and interesting points, was to find the line where the animals express human emotions, but don’t become overly anthropomorphic. It is deliberately not treated in an “over the top” cartoon style, which hopefully makes it more relatable.”
Animals in the ads are used to express human emotions. “I hope people will appreciate the subtleties of certain expressions and what they mean to convey,” shared Shinde.
Other than the animation work, the integration into realistic environments, and the many details needed to make the ad convincing, were wonderful to create, he revealed.
The spots were created by the ad director Baagchi but “given our expertise in working on high end animation content, we like to add our creative flavour to everything which not every director is open for,” Shinde added. “However, we had a great time working on them as the director was very open to ideas, as well as providing many of his own, yet never losing track of the end goal.” The team at the studio worked from storyboard to final output.
As a first ad project for the studio, was it challenging in any way? “Commercials are like short movies, one has to go through the entire process of storytelling and execution regardless of the duration, and deadlines are always short,” he highlighted. “The joy of working on challenging animation content attracted us towards this project.”
“It was a first for us but a great experience. We are open to get our hands on anything that requires pushing boundaries and creating beautiful pictures,” he concluded.
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.
