Ad Campaigns
Urban Company humanises face masks with #WearASmile campaign
NEW DELHI: As we all don masks to lead our daily lives in the new normal, in some ways we've all attained a degree of uniform anonymity. With most of our faces covered up, it's as though our true selves – who we are as a human – are also hidden. In light of this, Urban Company’s has unveiled the #WearASmile campaign, which aims to allay the diminished human element between consumers and professionals, by adding a smile to the face mask.
Under this initiative, all service professionals will be issued face masks with a smile on it. The company believes that while masks keep consumers and service professionals safe, they make people (service professionals) invisible by hiding their faces and humanity. To this effect, all professionals on the platform will be issued face masks with smiles on them – as a small reminder of the human behind the mask, and a way to humanise the mask itself.
Urban company director – marketing Tarun Menon said, “For our service professionals, masks hide their faces, making them unrecognisable; hiding the individuals behind the masks. Through the pandemic, we’ve heard stories from around the world that have reaffirmed our faith in the indomitable human spirit. Our intent with this small change to the masks our service professionals wear is to make the face mask in itself a little more human, with the smallest of reminders of that unbeatable human spirit – a smile.”
Brands such as Uber, OYO, Big Basket, Ola Money and Pharmeasy have extended their support to this initiative – some will change their social media display pictures across platforms to their logos with smiling face masks on them in support.
In addition, Urban Company’s app icon will also change to reflect the new smiling mask being issued to service professionals. At the outset of the pandemic, Urban Company was one of the first brands to add a face mask to their app icon, underscoring its commitment to offering safe services.
So, be it on the mask or underneath it, smile. After all, a smile is a curve that sets everything straight.
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.
