Ad Campaigns
The Mahindra Group refreshes its corporate purpose ‘Rise’
Mumbai: One of India’s largest and most admired multinational federations of companies, The Mahindra Group has refurbished the messaging around its corporate purpose ‘Rise’. The refreshed ‘Rise’ calls for a more equal world, future readiness, and value creation, while continuing to drive positive change in the lives of people and communities.
While the group’s time-tested ideals and values remain unchanged, the ‘communication pillars’ of Rise have been contemporised to make it more relevant for the times we live in today.
Commenting on the refreshed purpose, Mahindra Group chief customer and brand officer Asha Kharga, says, “The messaging is an outcome of the actions that we have taken within our business over more than a decade. Our intention is to be a global ESG leader through our businesses – be it through our foray into EVs, net zero residential buildings or our solar business. By refreshing the Rise messaging, we have given a contemporary voice to a 77-year-old legacy of values. We believe that every business needs to be relevant to the citizens of the future because they are the consumers of the future. You cannot have a healthy business without a healthy planet. Rise will continue to be the North Star for us to work towards creating a better planet for the citizens of the future”.
The origin of the Rise philosophy comes from the 1945 print ad, released by Mahindra, on the brink of India’s independence. It mentioned no product or service. Instead, it listed fundamental principles with which the company would operate. The principles laid out then still form the bedrock of the Mahindra Group’s purpose, “Rise.”
To bring alive the refreshed philosophy, the company has rolled out a communication campaign across print and broadcast media over the next few weeks. The message is conveyed through this hard-hitting communication that Ogilvy India has helped put together and which is relevant to every viewer.
Speaking about the film, Ogilvy India Chief Creative Officers Kainaz Karmakar & Harshad Rajadhyaksha say, “It was inspiring to immerse ourselves in brand Mahindra. The more we understood their beliefs, the easier it was to create this communication. The kids in the film are the future consumers. They are the citizens of the future and we’re lucky because this generation is keenly interested in the ethics of what they consume. They are aware and vocal. Together We Rise’, is not just a piece of advertising, it is the most assured way to succeed in the years to come.”
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.
