Ad Campaigns
Today Group bets big on ‘Happiness Month’ to build brand IP
MUMBAI: Today group has launched its ‘Happiness Month’, not just a promotional wheeze, but a full-blown attempt to forge a brand IP, it claims. Think of it as a strategic play, a bit like a well-timed shot, designed to lock in customer loyalty and make channel partners feel good. It’s aiming for a ‘Happiness First’ mantra.
March, that crucial sales window, sees Today Group showering potential customers with gifts that would make a sultan blush. We’re talking whitegoods, gold coins (always a winner), motorbikes, the obligatory luxury cars, and, for the truly lucky few, international holidays. It’s less a sales drive, more a full-on giveaway.
But it’s not all about the buyers. The troops – read: employees – are getting a look-in too. Awards, incentives, and ‘happiness letters’ to the families – a touch of the sentimental, perhaps, but effective. The company has even thrown in a Women’s Day movie screening (one hopes the popcorn was top-notch) and a sports day to get everyone’s competitive juices flowing. Staff are encouraged to share their ‘happy moments,’ which could be a delightful exercise in team building, or a cunning way to harvest content for their social media.
Bhavesh Shah, joint managing director, insists they’re transforming homebuying from a “mere transaction” into a “joyful milestone.” Quite right. No one wants a dreary house purchase; they want a ruddy good show.
The campaign’s visibility is being cranked up with out-of-home ads, print splashes, and radio bombardment. Today group is aiming for a “memorable home-buying experience,” which, in marketing speak, means “spend your hard-earned cash here, and we’ll make you feel like a million quid.” And in this cut-throat market, a bit of theatricality is hardly a crime.
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.
