Ad Campaigns
Unacademy’s new campaign highlights role of mother as first teacher
Mumbai: The edtech learning platform, Unacademy has launched its new campaign celebrating motherhood titled ‘Meri Pehli Academy’. The film commemorates the role of every mother as the first teacher, educator in every child’s life.
Conceptualised by Ogilvy, the film showcases the story of a young student – Bulbul, who is moving to a new city to live alone. It highlights how her mother has come along to help her set up the place, guiding her to do things on her own, testing and mentoring her to live her life independently. The heartfelt appreciation soon turns into a deeper realisation, as Bulbul begins to see her mother as her first academy.
The film outlines several instances which reinforce the subconscious learnings from the mother. When the mother asks Bulbul to make ‘chai’ – Bulbul learns the whereabouts of items in the kitchen and it is a metaphor for learning how to fend for yourself. When Bulbul starts unpacking her room, her mother hands her the box opener, highlighting how she is equipping Bulbul to start the new journey.
Speaking on the launch of the film, Unacademy’s partner & chief marketing officer, Karan Shroff said, “Throughout our formative years, our mother figures teach us several valuable life lessons. For most of us, we do not realise during our entire lifetime, the pivotal role they play in our lives, which is that of our first educator, our first Academy.
“This year, we are commemorating the learnings we all got from our #MeriPehliAcademy with the hope that the message resonates with all our learners. It also conveys Unacademy’s promise of being a lifelong ally to learners at every step of their journey along with their mother,” he added.
Ogilvy’s chief creative officer Puneet Kapoor said, “A mother is our first teacher and our first school. From learning our first lessons from her, we also learn valuable life lessons. A mother is the foundation to a child’s being, her/his pillar of strength. The role that a mother plays in a child’s life, can’t be paralleled by any other human relationship. This was the genesis of the wonderful idea of the film:Maa- #MeriPehliAcademy.”
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.
