Ad Campaigns
Past Dhoni comes face to face with Present Dhoni in new Gulf Pride ad
NEW DELHI: Gulf Oil Lubricants India has released a new campaign to celebrate the 10th anniversary of India’s World Cup triumph, featuring former Team India captain MS Dhoni. The objective of the campaign is to highlight Gulf Pride engine oil’s brand promise of “Consistent Insta Pick-up”.
The creative draws a parallel between Dhoni’s consistent performance on the field, over so many years, and the product providing consistent performance when it comes to the bike’s instant pick-up.
Gulf Oil Lubricants MD & CEO Ravi Chawla, “We know that Dhoni has been consistent not only when it comes to his cricket performance, but also when it comes to his bikes. The clutter-breaking visual hook in the TVC was to tell the story of Dhoni’s consistent performance by having Dhoni from 2005 taking advice from present-day Dhoni. He then surprises the 2005-Dhoni when he reveals that his first bike is still around and not just functions well, but has the same instant pick-up as earlier, because of Gulf Pride engine oil.”
The campaign is designed to reinstate the core messaging of Gulf Pride – that stands for instant pickup and consistent performance regardless of the circumstances.
“Unlike our previous campaigns, this was a challenge to shoot as we had to recreate MS Dhoni from 2005. While ageing a person is relatively easy, reverse-ageing a person is a technical challenge. Not only did we have to shoot Dhoni in a dual role, the visual effects team had to meticulously reverse-age him to make him look like his younger self. A lot of attention was also paid to recreate younger Dhoni’s clothing and mannerisms. Also, the script of the interview film was developed with a lot of inputs from MSD himself, as it had to be convincing as an authentic/genuine conversation with his younger self,” Chawla added.
This campaign drives home the message that not only does Gulf Pride provide instant pick-up (acceleration) it does so consistently over many thousand kms and years.
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.
