Ad Campaigns
Ranbir Kapoor joins the Lay’s bandwagon
MUMBAI: Celebrity faces have always added flavor to PepsiCo marquee brand Lay’s. From cricketers to actors, all have lent their charm to sell the bag of snacks.
The latest to enter the bandwagon is Ranbir Kapoor. The new campaign will follow Lay’s advertising trend which has always been about youth and moments of friendship. The actor was chosen as the brand thinks he fits in perfectly with its persona of youthful energy & international appeal that continues to grow in the minds of consumers.
PepsiCo India western category food category director Gaurav Mehta said, “We are proud to associate with Ranbir Kapoor who truly reflects the modern, aspirational and youthful persona of the Lay’s brand and its consumers. As an individual who seeks joy and magic in the ordinary, spontaneous moments of life, Ranbir is also a genuine embodiment of the brand philosophy of ‘Pal Banaye Magical’. We believe that this association with Ranbir will enable us to take our brand philosophy to new heights as we expand our reach to India’s youth. We look forward to a great new year and are confident that this partnership will be mutually rewarding.” The new face of Lay’s Ranbir Kapoor said, “Lay’s is one of the brands I have grown up with! It is such a popular & universally loved brand and I am excited to be associated with Lay’s. As a brand, Lay’s stands for youthfulness & spontaneity and seeking simple joys in life’s ordinary moments. Lay’s belief of ‘Pal Banaye Magical’, which has always celebrated the joy in life’s little moments – is something I can identify with and I genuinely believe that many a magical moment is hidden in life’s ordinary, spontaneous moments. I am excited to work with the brand and look forward to a great journey ahead.”
While Ranbir becomes the face of the new campaign, actor Saif Ali Khan will continue to endorse Lay’s.
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.
