Ad Campaigns
Uber and Lego roll out brick-themed rides to mark flagship launch in India
MUMBAI: Not all heroes wear capes; some ride in cabs with giant plastic bricks on the roof.
In a colourful twist to the daily commute, Uber partnered with Lego® to roll out special edition rides across Gurgaon to celebrate the opening of Lego’s first flagship store in India at Ambience Mall. The collaboration has turned ordinary Uber rides into roving reminders of childhood whimsy, featuring cars wrapped in signature Lego colours and topped with oversized bricks.
Designed to turn heads and trigger nostalgia, the fleet was deployed just in time for the store’s launch, offering riders a literal trip down memory lane. Whether passengers were headed to the store or simply on their way to work, the joy kicked in well before the destination.
“This partnership is all about bringing imagination to the streets. Uber connects people to places—and now, to moments of creativity and nostalgia too”, the companies said jointly.
The stunt wasn’t just visual. Uber and Lego amplified the activation through a content-led influencer campaign, spotlighting creators, families, and young fans sharing their ‘Lego-fied’ travel experiences. From social reels to selfie stops, the campaign racked up organic traction, pulling audiences into the world of play and paving the way for experiential branding.
For Uber, it marked another chapter in its efforts to position itself as more than a mobility solution. The company continues to reimagine urban travel by infusing pop culture, partnerships, and play into its rider experiences.
The campaign continues through the week in Gurgaon and has already drawn keen interest from riders, onlookers, and influencers alike. With Lego’s flagship store up and running, the collaboration hints at future possibilities where brands meet on roads, quite literally.
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.
