Ad Campaigns
Leo Burnett’s new McDonald’s campaign gets foodies social over Maharaja burger
MUMBAI: Leo Burnett’s new campaign for McDonald’s titled #ThodaTimeAur aims to get Indian consumers more social.
Calling the new Maharaja Burger as the social burger, the new TVC urges people to spend quality time with friends and family over a hearty McDonald’s burger.
Given the fast paced life, people mostly hurry through their lives and also through their meals, hardly finding time to communicate and share quality offline experiences. Using this simple insight, Leo Burnett has launched a new campaign for McDonald’s – #ThodaTimeAur to help the brand launch its new product offering – the Maharaja Mac – the Social Burger, across the country. The new sandwich is available in two variants – flame grilled Chicken & the first ever veg Mac that takes time to finish, giving people #ThodaTimeAur to catch up with friends and family.
McDonald’s India – West and South marketing and digital director Kedar Teny said, “As we celebrate the 20th anniversary of McDonald’s in India this year, we decided to reinvent one of our most iconic burgers – The Maharaja Mac. The New Maharaja Mac offers a fulfilling dining experience to customers and is a meal in itself. The build of the burger is such that it takes more time to finish, thereby giving people more time to socialise. This proposition takes forward the brand’s agenda of building sociability at the heart of everything it does. The campaign strikes up a conversation with consumers that largely focuses on gaining their share of time. Our campaign tagline #ThodaTimeAur highlights how the Maharaja Mac allows the customer to socialise and spend quality time with their friends and family, and enjoy a memorable dining experience. We are extremely delighted to kick start the year with this exciting launch and will continue to stay attuned to the evolving needs of our customers and constantly innovate menu to stay ahead of the curve.”
Leo Burnett CCO RajDeepak Das added, “Maharaja Mac is the social burger from McDonald’s and its purpose is to allow people more time to socialise with friends and loved ones. Aptly titled #ThodaTimeAur, the campaign demonstrates how with Maharaja Mac’s great taste and large size, one can involve in long conversations, thus helping to further establish the brand’s image as a great place to connect and share for real.”
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.
