Ad Campaigns
#McGrillisBack: Iconic burger returns after online petition
NEW DELHI: Days after giving in to popular demand of bringing back the much-loved Chicken McGrill burger, McDonald’s India north & east has launched the #McGrillisBack campaign for the most talked about burger in town.
Fans of the iconic Chicken McGrill had started a petition and took to social media to begin a movement asking McDonald’s to #BringMcGrillBack. The rally found support from comic Abhishek Upmanyu and actor Neha Dhupia, who also signed the petition and spoke about their love for the burger. After a large number of requests started pouring in, the fast food giant decided to reintroduce the burger.
"You guys did it. Chicken #McgrillisBack on popular demand in stores near you. You read it right, YOU WIN," wrote the official handle for McDonald's India on Instagram. It had been taken off menus in 2019 when outlets had reopened in Delhi.
The ‘#McGrillisBack’ campaign, featuring actress Shreya Chaudhary, puts a funny spin on some of the popular reactions by netizens on their love for Chicken McGrill and their celebrations when the burger was put back on the menu. Conceptualised by DDB Mudra, the campaign with the help of digital films uses situational humour to highlight people’s craze for the burger.
Robert Hunghanfoo, head, CPRL (Connaught Plaza Restaurants operates McDonald’s restaurants in north and east India) said, "Chicken McGrill has been one of the most loved menu offerings at McDonald’s. The reaction and desire we witnessed on social media is a true testament to people’s love for it. With this campaign, we are offering our customers another chance to relive their favourite memories by offering them a menu item that they have been asking us for."
“Chicken McGrill is an icon. And the icons are timeless. Its teeming fans had been campaigning for its comeback. Therefore, it was only natural for us to make this unbound love for the Chicken McGrill, the fuel for its comeback. The campaign celebrates this very love for the burger in a heartfelt, McDonald’s way so that the fans never have to stop lovin’ it!” said Ashutosh Sawhney, managing partner – DDB Mudra Group, north.
Chicken McGrill is now a part of the all-day menu across all McDonald’s restaurants in north and east India, including McDelivery and takeaway orders.
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.
