Ad Campaigns
TOI’s new campaign raises awareness for big cat conservation
Mumbai: The Times of India, the country’s largest English newspaper, today launched the “Saving Our Stripes” campaign to raise awareness about the importance of tiger conservation. The campaign commemorates the 50th anniversary of Project Tiger, a centrally-sponsored scheme that started in 1973 and aims to ensure the survival and maintenance of the tiger population in specially constituted tiger reserves throughout India.
“This year marks the completion of 50 years of Project Tiger, a world-famous conservation model and success story,” said TOI director Kaustuv Chatterjee. “Times of India is giving the nation a popular film(s) and song on the occasion to drive home the importance of the project for future generations as well. Through this initiative, we are taking the message of conservation to the masses, signifying that tigers and forests are a national treasure and an inheritance for our children”.
The “Saving Our Stripes” campaign has featured a variety of content across TOI’s print and digital platforms, including quirky contests, thought-provoking editorials, and a special Tiger Anthem curated by celebrated artists including Nalla Muthu (a national award-winning wildlife cinematographer) and Shantanu Moitra (composer and musician for Bollywood films like 3 Idiots and Parineeta).
The Tiger Anthem showcases heartwarming images of pure love between a mother tiger and her cub, giving viewers a glimpse into their habits and the world they inhabit. The film traces its path to the serene tunes of Moitra, surreal lyrics by Tanveer Ghazi, and beautiful visuals capturing the power of emotion by Nalla.
“The hearts of the toughest human beings will melt on seeing a tiger cub caressing its mother’s face,” said Moitra. “It will work because the song and visuals are from a cub’s perspective. I am hoping children will pick it up like the ‘lakdi ki kathi, kathi pe ghoda’ song of the 80s.”
Elaborating on how music and films are the best mediums for communicating a message to people, Nalla said, “The minute you talk about tigers and poems, people remember William Blake’s ‘Tyger, tyger burning bright’ first. Using music or a narrative-driven medium like a feature film to convey a message can have a profound impact on an audience. Emotionally engaging content often resonates with people on a deeper level, making it more likely that they’ll remember the message and potentially act on it”.
When launched, Project Tiger covered nine reserves across 18,278 sq. km. Currently, there are 53 tiger reserves spanning 75,000 sq. km. Today, with 3,167 tigers, 75 per cent of the global wild tiger population is in India.
“The ‘Saving Our Stripes’ campaign is a call to action for all of us to do our part to protect these majestic creatures,” said Chatterjee. “By raising awareness about the importance of tiger conservation, we can help ensure that these magnificent animals continue to thrive for generations to come”.
https://savingourstripes.timesgroup.com/ProjectTiger
https://savingourstripes.timesgroup.com/ProjectTiger/tiger-anthem-films
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.
