Ad Campaigns
This Friendship Day, ‘Starbucks + You’ celebrates the bond of connections
Mumbai: Starbucks is celebrating Friendship Day this year with their partners (baristas) thoughtfully and uniquely true only to Starbucks. Bringing this message to life, Starbucks latest campaign titled ‘Starbucks + You’, is based on the insight that partners in stores form integral bonds with their consumers. Interacting with them daily, from knowing their order by heart to celebrating various milestones, they have created a sense of belonging together that goes beyond a transactional relationship.
Going beyond remembering names, and celebrating special occasions such as birthdays and promotions, Starbucks celebrates the power of simple gestures and is a reminder that sometimes, companionship and solace are brewed in the simplest of places.
Starting today, all Starbucks stores across India will be filled with heartfelt gestures:
1 Select stores will be spreading joy by gifting Potli bags of signature Starbucks coffee beans to existing and new consumers to bond over a shared love for coffee.
2 Partners (baristas) will surprise consumers with handwritten notes of appreciation, turning their Friendship Day visits into memorable moments.
3 To show gratitude on the day, special messages on delivery cups such as ‘Thanks for making my ordinary special’, and ‘Your smile always makes our mornings brighter’ will surprise consumers
4 As a gesture to extend their friendship to the customers, Starbucks Baristas are offering a flat 30 per cent off on short and tall beverages with a coupon you can find here from 1st to 18th August
TATA Starbucks coo Adrit Mishra said, “Building on our unique Third Place Experience, we are excited to bring personalized celebrations to our customers through their favourite partners. At Starbucks, we are dedicated to creating memories that nurture friendships and foster connections over a cup of coffee. We want this occasion to serve as a reminder that we will always be here to cherish the big and small moments alike.”
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.
