Ad Campaigns
ACC asks “Drama kyon?” in new Gold Water Shield campaign
NEW DLHI: As construction gradually resumes across the country, ACC Limited, one of India’s leading building material manufacturers, has rolled out a new digital-first campaign for its innovative product – Gold Water Shield, a water-repellent cement.
Conceived by 82.5 Communications, the campaign includes a video asset as well as other creative elements for various online and offline touch-points.
Riding on the company’s long history, trust in its products and the distinct streak of innovation present in most ACC products, the Gold Water Shield ad satirises typical ads that resort to ‘drama’ to sell products. In this ad, a smart ACC presenter signs off ‘ACC hai toh drama kyon?’ as his audience, a group of homebuilders, shoos away an entertainer who made an appearance only to convince them that using Gold Water Shield means ‘Paani se no haani’ for their homes. The conviction in the cutting-edge product and the name ACC is enough for the homebuilders.
ACC Limited CMO and strategic initiatives Ashish Prasad said, “ACC has always been an innovator at heart. Gold Water Shield is our testament to that. With such a compelling USP, we decided to talk about it straight up, without frills and drama.”
82.5 Communications chairman and CCO Sumanto Chattopadhyay added, “When you have a product as good as gold and a reputation to match, you can afford to say it like it is. Surprisingly few brands have the stature to carry off this straight-shooting approach, making our communication unique.”
82.5 Communications co-chairman and CEO Kapil Arora said, “ACC is a pioneer in cement manufacturers in the country. And with Gold Water Shield, they’ve introduced yet another extremely relevant offering for Indian consumers looking to avoid leakage problems, right from the time of construction. We’ve seen the product in action ourselves and also spoke to consumers who had used it and now swear by it. That’s where the inspiration of the un-ad came from. No drama. Only delivery. With ACC Gold Water Shield.”
82.5 Communications ECD and creative head Mumbai & Kolkata Mayur Varma said, “Usually, we dramatise the product benefit in advertising. In this case we didn’t have to dramatise it, because the product benefit itself was so dramatic.”
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.
