Ad Campaigns
Leo Burnett Orchard bags GNC India biz, unveils ‘Start Strong’ campaign
MUMBAI: Leo Burnett Orchard has won the creative duties of Guardian Healthcare, one of the largest health and wellness supplements retailers in India and the master franchisee for GNC products in the country. The business was won after a multi-agency pitch and will be handled by Leo Burnett Orchard’s Mumbai office.
Leo Burnett Orchard will now create awareness and build brand salience by focusing on leading GNC Pro Performance 100% Whey Protein to the status of flagship brand. The first campaign for the Pro Performance 100% Whey is specially designed for beginners in the world of fitness. An integrated marketing campaign–Start Strong–has been unveiled to promote GNC’s 100 per cent whey protein supplements. Popular Bollywood actor John Abraham is featured in the commercials.
Speaking about the new business and campaign Leo Burnett Orchard VP and branch head – Mumbai Manav Rai Ahuja said, “We are really excited to have GNC in our fold. They are the global leaders in nutraceuticals. Each GNC product is the result of an intensive scientific research process ensuring full effectiveness. Today, more and more people are conscious about their physicality. We, therefore, have a huge number of people joining gyms but an equal number of people dropping out. Through this campaign, we want to speak to people who are in their early stages of fitness exploration. The ‘Start Strong’ proposition sharply focuses on the importance of choosing the right beginning that yields desired results and motivates people to continue their efforts. This is GNC’s first mass media campaign and we are ensuring that it becomes a huge success by using our unique Power of One capabilities.”
Speaking about the campaign GNC India CEO Shadab Khan said, “The supplementation market in India is still at a very nascent stage and people lack the knowledge about how the right supplementation can fuel their performance. We believe that there is a need to educate people on how, along with discipline and hard work, consuming the right protein is extremely important to achieve their fitness goals. GNC Pro Performance 100% Whey Protein is the basic kick-starter protein that has been specially formulated for beginners, to maximise their fitness goals. We are confident that our new campaign with John Abraham, on GNC Pro Performance, will help inspire youngsters to take a holistic view of health and nutrition and thereby, choose the right supplements.”
Speaking about the campaign Leo Burnett Orchard executive creative director Amod Dani said, “A lot of people who workout have icons they look up to. The beginners, however, lack the right direction and the right mentorship. John Abraham is a fitness icon; his disciplined approach to building and maintaining his physique has always been an inspiration to many. We brought this very inspiration to life with John’s poster coming alive and him motivating his protégé’s workout with a balance of hard work coupled with right supplementation. Workouts are built on a strong mentor-protégé relationship, and that’s what we have reflected in the film; John as the mentor-in-chief coaches his protégé and shows him the real meaning of ‘Start Strong’.”
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.
