Ad Campaigns
Rahul ‘The Wall’ Dravid’s calm facade cracks in new Cred ad
MUMBAI: How many times have you seen the Indian cricket team’s former captain Rahul Dravid lose his cool and holler at an opponent? Chances are nil. Known for his calm and gentlemanly temperament, both on and off-the-field, ‘The Wall’, as he’s been dubbed for his rock solid Test match innings, has seldom been known to crumble even under the most intense, nail-biting match situations. So, it’s not surprising that a new ad for credit card payment app Cred, which shows him in a never-before-seen angry avatar, has been breaking the internet! Fans just cannot have enough of this spanking-new side of the cricketer.
So much so that, even current Team India skipper Virat Kohli could not believe his eyes and took to Twitter to share his disbelief saying, “Never seen this side of Rahul bhai,” with a shocked emoji.
Never seen this side of Rahul bhai pic.twitter.com/4W93p0Gk7m
— Virat Kohli (@imVkohli) April 9, 2021
The ad plays precisely on this sense of disbelief to promote Cred’s cashback and reward schemes, saying that the offer may sound as unbelievable and ridiculous as saying “Rahul Dravid has anger issues!” And then goes on to show the rarely-flustered cricketer losing his cool while stuck in Bengaluru’s infamous traffic jam. Dravid aces his road rage acting display, even going on to stand up through his SUV’s sunroof with a cricket bat in hand to holler, “Indiranagar ka gunda hun main!’ (I am the don of Indiranagar- a well-known locality in the metro).”
The ad, released ahead of the opening match of the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians, went viral in no time and has garnered two million views already.
It even sparked a meme fest online, with some netizens listing it among Dravis’s best ‘performances’ and some blaming the cricketer’s new-found aggression on the Bengaluru traffic, saying it can do this to the best of us.
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.
