Ad Campaigns
Center fresh, Dharma 2.0 come together for Bollywood-style partnership
Mumbai: Center fresh, the gum and mint brand from Perfetti Van Melle has announced its marquee collaboration with Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar’s Dharma 2.0 for a series of two digital films. The campaign collaboration has been facilitated by Wavemaker India, with support on the creative front from Ogilvy India.
As part of this collaboration, Center fresh and Dharma 2.0 will release two digital films that will explore the possibilities and nuances of fresh breath confidence but with the Dharma twist. The brand’s proposition of fresh breath confidence will be at the core of the digital films, while the storytelling will have a distinctive Bollywood treatment that’s contemporary, fresh and relatable, the brand said.
This collaboration was announced on social channels by Karan Johar with an engaging video, shot in his inimitable style conveying the seamless brand partnership.
The creative ideation of this premise is credited to Punit Malhotra & his team from Dharma 2.0. “Dharma 2.0 intends to bring the same level of aesthetic quality and signature professionalism of the movie production business, and holds a competitive edge over other established players in its space just like Center fresh stands out loud in the confectionery sector. This 25+ years old brand is a flawless match for Dharma 2.0,” said Punit Malhotra.
The first digital film titled “Parda” in the series stars Anjali Sivaraman with popular actor & dancer Shantanu Maheshwari in leading roles. In times when the faces of people are not fully visible due to mask-wearing protocols – how do you test the waters of attraction and initiate a conversation with someone you think you like. This relatable premise forms the crux of the film.
The storyline of this digital film revolves around the morning office-going ritual of two individuals with the female lead keen to break the ice and engage in a conversation with her fellow passenger in the lift.
Commenting on the partnership, Perfetti Van Melle India – director marketing Rohit Kapoor said, “Pushing the envelope on the creative front with fresh breath confidence at the core is part of Center fresh’s DNA. Over the last few years, we have been putting out digital content across key digital platforms to engage with our core consumers on a medium relevant for them. Our collaboration with Dharma 2.0. is to marry the magic of boy-girl first meetings with the world of Center fresh’s fresh breath confidence and thereby create something unique for our young consumers to enjoy and retain the ‘freshness’ the brand offers.”
The Center fresh X Dharma 2.0 collaboration will also be amplified through social media promotions and by Karan Johar himself. The second film under this collaboration is expected to be out early next year.
Speaking about the film, Johar said, “Both Dharma and the brand Center fresh are known for their youth-focused appeal and initiatives and this collaboration further solidifies these very sensibilities. My goal has been to add the extra oomph of the unexpected, to this modern-day rendition of the plot.”
“Center fresh with its fresh approach to creative communication has always associated with youth through its innovative campaigns. With this campaign, we have successfully established the connection of two young brands who share the same DNA and are poised to offer fresh content to the youth,” Wavemaker India chief content officer Karthik Nagarajan said.
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.
