Ad Campaigns
Barbeque Nation taps ‘milne ki bhookh’ to kick off the new year
BENGALURU: Barbeque Nation is ringing in the new year with a reminder that some cravings cannot be ordered online. The casual dining chain has rolled out a new film campaign, milne ki bhookh, pitching its restaurants as places to meet, reconnect and linger over food.
Set against a world of constant messages and missed meet-ups, the campaign leans into a simple truth: dining out remains one of the few rituals that still brings people together. Barbeque Nation positions itself as the excuse and the setting for real conversations, shared plates and unhurried moments.
Nakul Gupta, cmo at Barbeque Nation, says the brand has long been about shared celebrations. As the year turns, milne ki bhookh captures what he calls a growing hunger to meet, connect and spend time together, with food at the centre of that experience.
Created by Makani Creatives, the campaign comprises three films built around Barbeque Nation’s signature grills and desserts. The storytelling is deliberately sensorial, designed to spark cravings while nudging diners to step out and meet in person.
Pavan Punjabi, chief integration officer at Makani Creatives, says the idea stems from a familiar contradiction. People are constantly connected, yet meetings with loved ones are endlessly postponed. Milne ki bhookh, he says, is a gentle push to make time for real-life catch-ups, using food as the reason to come together, share a meal and create memories.
The campaign breaks on December 25 with the grilled prawns film and will run for two months, amplified across digital platforms. As the new year begins, Barbeque Nation is betting that the strongest appetite of all is not for food alone, but for each other.
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.
