Ad Campaigns
Vi levels up with one lakh towers and animated cricket squad in IPL-themed campaign
MUMBAI: Riding high on the IPL frenzy, telecom operator Vi has unveiled a new campaign that blends network growth with cricketing flair. The company marked a major milestone, adding over 1,00,000 towers across India in just six months of FY24-25 — a move it says reinforces its commitment to improving both scale and quality of connectivity.
The campaign introduces ‘The Netties’ — a team of animated cricket avatars inspired by mobile towers. Positioned as the “strongest team of the season”, these characters symbolise the agility and strength of Vi’s growing network. The campaign, conceptualised by Ogilvy India, aims to explain a deeply technical upgrade through lighthearted, engaging storytelling.
Vi’s recent strides include the launch of 5G services in Mumbai, Chandigarh and Patna, with Delhi and Bangalore next in line. Simultaneously, the telecom major has expanded its 4G footprint by enhancing capacity across spectrum bands — 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz, and 2300 MHz — leading to wider indoor and outdoor coverage, faster data speeds, and improved user experiences. The strengthened 4G network now reaches 1.07 billion people.
“Our network expansion is not just about scale, but also smart, strategic deployment,” said Vi CMO Avneesh Khosla. “By focusing on high-traffic areas and optimising spectrum usage, we’re delivering a future-ready, high-performance network”.
The new TVCs aim to entertain while informing. In the first film titled The Catch, one of the Netties leaps outside the stadium to grab a sixer-bound ball, subtly drawing parallels to Vi’s reliability in catching even the weakest of signals. The campaign will roll out across TV, OTT, YouTube, radio, and social media starting 17 May.
“Every Vi campaign should spark joy”, said Ogilvy senior executive creative director Rohit Dubey. “With animation, we turned technical achievements into a cricketing narrative that’s fun, yet impactful”.
The campaign’s playful narrative underscores a serious message: Vi is investing heavily in infrastructure, prioritising quality, and betting big on entertainment-led engagement.
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.
