Ad Campaigns
Stoa announces new brand campaign in association with The Rabbit Hole
Mumbai: Online B-school startup Stoa has launched their brand campaign in association with The Rabbit Hole, a video content solutions agency of the Zoo Media Network. Engineered with an unconventional message, the campaign is spread over a three-part film series, playing on the reverse psychology of acquiring an education degree. The series is directed and produced by The Rabbit Hole, and stars renowned actors Brijendra Kala, Joy Sengupta and Kaustubh Kumar. Highlighting Stoa’s brand messaging, the films are directed with the thought that “a degree is not applicable everywhere”.
While MBA is one of the most sought-after education degrees, not all MBA degrees hold value unless they are from top-tier institutes. The cost of pursuing an MBA is exorbitant making it nearly impossible for many smart professionals to afford it. Stoa is founded on the belief that good education does not require a degree. As an alternative to MBA, Stoa aims to help professionals acquire all the advantages of an MBA without having to struggle with a traditional MBA program’s rigid schedule, while shelling out tens of lakhs in fees. The campaign is expected to go live across the brand’s social media platforms, including Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
Stoa co-founder Raj Kunkolienkar commented, “One of the ways we looked at the campaign is to make sure that customers are able to qualify themselves – we aren’t really for those who are just after a degree. Given the obsession in our society around that, I think the ad films make their point pretty clearly.”
Speaking about the campaign, The Rabbit Hole (Zoo Media Network) business head Rishabh Khatter said, “At the Rabbit Hole we appreciate it when a brand stands out in thought, message and approach with a room to experiment on advertising narrative. Raj & Aditya provided that exactly to the creative and execution teams making it an absolute pleasure to be associated with this campaign. We look forward to disrupting a lot more for them in the future as we have previously in the edtech ecosystem.”
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.
