Ad Campaigns
Bisleri ad attracts censure from teachers, gets schooled on social media
MUMBAI: It is to Bisleri’s credit that to basically every vendor or person on the street in India the company’s name is synonymous with drinking water! That’s the extent to which the brand has penetrated our psyches.
Nonetheless, the latest campaign by the bottled water seller has rendered itself unpalatable to some quarters! The teachers’ community of Rajasthan and Gujarat have come out in protest against the commercial released by Bisleri last week.
The film which shows a teacher teaching a classroom full of camels aims to humorously reinforce the Covid times messaging of “Contactless”. The students (the CG camels) ridicule the teacher for not knowing the importance of going contactless. The teacher then attempts to drink water from a pot (matka) by dipping his steel mug into it, which evokes more hysteria from his students. The oversmart camel then teases his masterji for being unaware about Bisleri’s contactless mineral water, bottled in hygienic conditions. He then tutors the teacher that “Samajhdaar bisleri peete hai” (smart people drink Bisleri) and tosses him a bottle of the drink.
Now the RSTA (Rajasthan Senior Teachers Association) and some other Teachers groups are up in arms, calling for a boycott of the ad claiming that it is derogatory to teachers, depicting the profession in a poor light.
Darshan Menaria, president, RSTA from Udaipur, in his tweet said, “We the teachers of India condemn Bisleri for its disgraceful comments about teachers… The preceptor #ShameonyouBisleri #BoycottBisleri.”
Offence has mainly been taken to the fact that a camel is being portrayed as smarter than the teacher! So much so that, some of them have allegedly written to the Prime Minister from Jaipur, seeking intervention in the removal of the ad and action against the bottled water company.
@BisleriZone ……For indian like me now ready to boycott Bisleri and now onwards we only use our local brands #boycottbisleriindia #BoycottBisleri @ZeeNews @1stIndiaNews pic.twitter.com/eQYnPbQ1P0
— Anil Gupta (@Anilkattakanota) April 28, 2021
The critiques of the film also said that it seeks to establish the intellectual superiority of choosing a bottled Bisleri water, as against potted water which is the norm in most parts of India, with its tagline “Samajhdaar bisleri peete hai”. That’s another thing that has not gone down well with people, who took to social media to register their objection saying that “Bisleri has insulted teachers and the ancient Indian culture of drinking water from pots in the advertisement, which will not be tolerated. The company must withdraw the advertisement and apologize.”
Bisleri ने विज्ञापन में शिक्षको तथा मटके से पानी पीने की प्राचीन भारतीय संस्कृति को अपमानित किया है जो बर्दाश्त नही होगा।कम्पनी विज्ञापन वापस ले और क्षमा मांगे।#boycuttbisleriindia #DDNews #indiatv #WithdrawBisleriCamelSchoolAd #boycottbisleriindia#BoycottBisleri@BisleriZone
— SUNIL KUMAR VERMAअध्यक्ष,महासंघ,स.मा.(राज.) (@SunilKu26627698) April 26, 2021
This is not acceptable . This ad is disgusting and disrespectful for teachers. Don’t degrade the nobility of this profession.
#WithdrawBisleriCamelSchoolAd #boycottbisleriindia#BoycottBisleri@BisleriZone @Aquafina @Kinley_India @kingfisherworld https://t.co/vHWUddA8Wt— Reena Yadav (@RinnyReena) April 26, 2021
#boycottbisleri @BisleriZone
If you don’t know how to respect a teacher, why do you insult him through advertisement? pic.twitter.com/OQgUD04jeh— Naresh Chaudhari (@NVChaudhari99) April 23, 2021
The hashtags #BoycottBisleri , #WithdrawBisleriCamelSchoolAd and #boycottbisleriindia were trending on Twitter . And at last count, the You Tube release of the ad had garnered 20,000 dislikes.
Bisleri launched its 360-degree integrated campaign with its new theme- ‘Samajhdaar Bisleri Peete Hai’ earlier this month. The first commercial in the series, featuring the cheeky Camel Baadal with his rider, aimed to reinforce consumers’ trust and raise awareness on the difference between the original Bisleri and fake alternatives in the market.
Conceptualised by 82.5 Communications, the second commercial in the series sought to make aware the consumer of the stringent production process that the brand goes through to ensure the highest standard of safety and purety. But the campaign seems to have run into rough weather, and it remains to be seen how the brand gets itself out of this Twitter storm.
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.
