Ad Campaigns
Zee TV stirs emotional connect with its brand campaign on the ‘first flight’
MUMBAI: Zee TV as a channel has always been poised to cater to the middle class. For its latest 25-year celebration refresh, the channel launched a commercial that encapsulates just that.
The ad film portrays a retired government employee, who is afraid of flying in an aircraft, takes a flight for the first time and for a heartwarming reason. Turns out, it is a first for his daughter too as the captain in charge of the same aircraft.
Conceptualised by Publicis India, the film delivers the message, ‘The great Indian middle class is truly taking charge and rewriting the rules of their destiny.’
During the launch of the film, ZEEL domestic broadcast business CEO Punit Misra shared that the entire team became teary eyed when the film was shown to them.
The TVC was created in 2 months. Sharing his experience of working with Zee for this particular ad film, Publicis India managing director and CCO Bobby Pawar mentions, “Zee TV is not just the pioneer of entertainment but it is an insider to everyone’s home and a part of their family. The characters become a part of the viewers life after a period of time and have built the notion of ‘Jo Khud Se Jeet Jata hai’ ( overcoming your inner battles). The story is about people who outdo themselves, their circumstances and the society to champion themselves at the end of the day.”
The campaigns talks about two things: the unconditional love of a father and about a woman who achieves her dream with her father’s support, despite the challenges.
ZEEL CMO Pratyusha Agarwal said, “ We wanted something that would be iconic for 100 years, which was truly delivered. Zee TV is not about the borrowed glory it’s about the common story.”
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.
