Ad Campaigns
Heineken banks on heritage in new campaign
NEW DELHI: Starting with the metros with the aim of attracting the affluent, Heineken with its campaign ‘There’s more behind the star’ is now planning to move to smaller cities in India. It is inviting consumers to discover the authentic product stories, the foundation of the global brand.
The brand campaign in India comprised localized outdoor communication which combined Heineken’s credentials and a city’s cultural nuances in a witty manner.
Aimed at addressing Heineken’s iconic heritage and at the same time telling compelling stories relevant and topical, the campaign spanned Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kolkata.
The global campaign consisted of a series of TV commercials featuring Hollywood star Benicio Del Toro, supporting digital activation and point of sale activities.
The humorous video ‘See Del Toro’ comparing what is behind its own ‘star’ status, to specific stories behind the legendary Heineken star. The content was created by Publicis Worldwide and filmed in various locations in Barcelona.
The campaign focuses on the beer itself, the brand’s rich heritage and its unparalleled international footprint.
In 142 years, Heineken has grown from a small Amsterdam-based company into the world’s most international premium lager. The aim is to show the quality and taste has never wavered.
United Breweries senior vice president marketing Samar Singh Sheikhawat said; “Consumers increasingly want to know what’s happening behind the scenes. Heineken has a wealth of authentic backstories.”
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.
