Ad Campaigns
Snapchat launches first-ever global integrated campaign ‘Real Friends’
MUMBAI: The world thrives through connections. Meaningful bonds between people are often at the heart of great art and storytelling, both behind and in front of the camera. A constant reminder of the meaning and the true value of friendships is important. In line with this on 30 July, the United Nations’ International Day of Friendship, Snapchat announced the launch of the ‘Real Friends’ campaign – its first-ever global integrated marketing campaign. The campaign highlights the spirit of the brand and the product, where true friendship is and always has been at the core.
As a part of the campaign, Snapchat connected with various friend-duos from 13 countries, each with a unique tale of their friendship journey. The videos capture their honest, intimate idiosyncrasies and unfiltered but relatable dynamics of these diverse sets of friends including a pair who have been lifelong friends, another a long-distance couple, and even one mother-daughter duo. For the first time ever, the friend-duos also shared a collection of their personals Snaps — 1:1 picture and video messages sent to each other on Snapchat.
In India, Snapchat connected with duos, Zara & Prakriti, who have together overcome anxiety, Ronit & Tanisha, who found a judgment-free space with Snapchat to share zany, quirky and intimate moments with each other, and Ruchi & Sanabh, childhood pals, now in their late 20s and use Snapchat to stay connected despite their overwhelming schedules.
The campaign, through the experience of these duos emphasises on the core philosophy of Snapchat, which was designed to empower users to be themselves with their real friends. Snap Inc. has also recently unveiled a Friendship Survey that highlighted the evolution of friendship across ages and cultures.
Interesting finds from the survey indicate that interacting with friends, whether in person or online, also leaves us feeling overwhelmingly positive emotions: “happy,” “loved,” and “supported” are the three most reported globally. Of Gen Z and millennials, 61 per cent believe that video and photos help them to express what they want to say in a way that they can’t with words. Snapchat was founded in 2011 on the belief that talking with photos and videos, with our real friends, was more personal and more fun than texting or keeping up on social media. Since then, the platform has evolved but never deviated from this core mission of helping close friends express themselves and be creative together.
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.
