Ad Campaigns
Thomas Cook film: Why a holiday is vital for a responsible Indian
MUMBAI: Indian tourism sector is growing at 7- 8 per cent annually but ironically our country is the 4th most vacation deprived nation in the world. Indians are still very reluctant and subject to procrastination when it comes to taking a holiday.
To fillip travel and holiday bookings, Thomas Cook India has launched the ‘Grand India Holiday Sale’ (GIHS) campaign again this year. While GIHS offers unmatched deals on vacation packages, the films encourage us to take a break from our all-important work lives, and that the world (read workplace) will not collapse if we really went on a holiday.
Created by Law & Kenneth Saatchi & Saatchi, the films are produced by Spotlight Films and directed by Amit Satyaveer Singh. The campaign will run primarily on digital – YouTube and Facebook supported with print and outdoor.
Thomas Cook India president and group head – marketing, service quality, financial services and innovation Abraham Alapatt said, “The new films are a fun/quirky take on vacation deprived Indians and showcase our Thomas Cook Grand India Holiday Sale as the first step in encouraging people to think holidays with a slew of great offers/deals. The thinning of the divide between work and personal lives is an unfortunate reality today, which is why it’s important to just take-off once on a while and the good news is that we’ve begun to see more people doing this nowadays.”
Law & Kenneth Saatchi & Saatchi SVP Debarjyo Nandi added, “Skipping or postponing holidays for work is a self-prophesised importance barometer. How many times have we thought or said something similar. Fact is we even believe it. We all see ourselves in these characters. That is what makes the films effective and entertaining.”
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.
