Ad Campaigns
Battle of the boxers: ASCI dismisses Amul Macho’s complaint against Lux Cozi
Mumbai: Lux Cozi has won the legal battle against Amul Macho regarding its latest advertisement starring actor Varun Dhawan. In a significant ruling, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has overruled the complaint filed by the rival innerwear brand stating that there was no similarity between the two ads in terms of concept and executional elements.
Earlier this month, Amul Macho had alleged that Lux Cozi had “blatantly copied” its ‘Toing’ ad from 2007 and subsequently approached Asci to intervene. However, after inspection, the industry watchdog observed that there was no resemblance in the two advertisements. Asci dismissed Amul Macho’s accusation of plagiarism against Lux Cozi as ‘baseless’.
According to the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC), the Lux Cozi’s ad is not at all similar to Amul Macho’s earlier TVC in general layout, copy, slogans, visual presentations, music, or sound effects, so as to suggest plagiarism. The CCC further concluded that Lux’s advertisement was not in contravention of chapter four of the ASCI Code related to fairness in competition and rejected Amul Macho’s complaint.
According to a statement issued by Lux Industries, the win reiterates Lux’s brand equity over baseless claims by Amul Macho.
Lux industries executive director Saket Todi said the Lux Cozi advertisement is unique on individual points as well as in totality, and any semblance is fleeting and only in respect of elements commonly used in the trade, such as shape and colour of the garment. “It is now an established fact that the advertisement bears no similarity whatsoever. The complainant’s advertisement was last aired in 2007, and thereafter, banned. No reputation, goodwill, or brand equity can be vested in publicity/marketing material that has been banned to the public for the last 14 years. We respect the verdict by Asci,” he added.
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.
