Ad Campaigns
TOI celebrates womanhood; #NoConditionsApply
MUMBAI: When we speak of womanhood, what comes to mind is a single state of being; as if it were an undifferentiated gender. However, through the years, society has created labels and tags that exist within this gender. The married and the unmarried, the happily married and the divorced, the straight and the lesbian, the proverbial ‘complete woman’ and the transgender.
In order to raise awareness about gender equality, Times Of India (TOI) has launched its #NoConditionsApply campaign and has recently launched a short film on inclusive Shindoor Khela. Relating I to Durga Pujo, which is a mega celebration of the homecoming of Shakti (goddess Durga and a symbol of divine femininity) to her maternal home with her sons and daughters, #NoConditionsApply campaign calls for an all-inclusive community celebration.
Celebrated as a community gathering on the last day of Durga Pujo (Dashami), Shindoor Khela is a tradition that has been celebrated by married women for hundreds of years. TOI brought together married, widowed, transgender, lesbian, single mothers and divorced women to celebrate the day. This film captures the journey of this inclusive celebration – that brings humanity closer and boundaries fade away. The short documentary sheds light on the way in which we can help our own people feel happy and together. It also features women who were a part of the celebrations and showcases their joy to be included.
Conceptualised by FCB Ulka, the campaign has touched the hearts of millions of people across the globe including the Indian film fraternity celebrities like Bipasha Basu, Tapasee Pannu, Celina Jaitly national award winner Srijit Mukherji among others.
FCB Ulka chief creative officer Swati Bhattacharya adds, “This movement wasn’t for those who had opted out. It was for those who had been pushed out, it was about erasing a line not drawn by them, but by others. It was about two dots of red with no barrier in between, it was about equality in symbology because after all, that is where it all begins and where it all flows back to. Every progressive, inclusive thought is only as powerful as the ritual it permeates, at least in a country like India where rituals are everything.”
Times Of India director brand Sanjeev Bhargava says, “It is wonderful to see the #NoConditionsApply campaign receive such a positive and welcoming response from men and women across the country, the campaign has touched over 5 million hearts so far.”
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.
