Ad Campaigns
‘Babuji’ is Manthan face for north India
MUMBAI: Bollywood’s sanskaari ‘Babuji’ Alok Nath is the new face of Zedblack’s Manthan Dhoop.
Manthan is a dhoop (incense) brand from the house of Mysore Deep Perfumery House (MDPH), one of the top three companies in Rs 60-billion overall agarbatti market in India, the top two being ITC and Cycle Agarbatti in the organised sector.
Manthan has launched its campaign “Manthan Zaroori Hai” featuring the actor where he urges people to introspect into their detached lifestyles. The campaign has been conceptualised and executed by Oberoi IBC.
Manthan Dhoop, with seven variants – Chandan, Gulab, Mogra, Guggal, Loban, Gold and Silver, claims to give a spiritual atmosphere at home, office or any other work place.
MDPH director Anshul Agarwal said: “MDPH wants to fortify its position as one of the top incense stick manufacturers in India. We recently signed former Indian captain MS Dhoni as our national brand ambassador for Zed Black. For regional markets, we have (actor) Bhagyashree for the west, and Odia superstar Barsha Priyadarshini for the east India market.”
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“In the north India market, Manthan is popular. To further strengthen the brand proposition, we have made Alok Nath the face,” he added.
Being one of the major players in the Rs 25-billion organised agarbatti sector, he said: “We are setting up one more state-of-the-art factory at Indore (MP) which is about 2 lac sq. ft. — which will be operational by January 2018. This would increase our production capacity by 40 per cent.”
Alok Nath shares, “Today, despite staying in the same house, we see families are drifting away and stay detached because of over-usage of mobile phones.” ‘Manthan Zaroori Hai’ portrayed in the TVC shows that work-life balance leads you into a a happy state of mind,” he added.
Oberoi IBC MD Anand Oberoi said: “Manthan Dhoop urges people to introspect their way of living. The campaign, consisting of three TVC spots, will be aired across both, mainline and digital media.”
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.
