Ad Campaigns
Licious serves a feast of colours with ‘Gulaal & Gravy’ Holi campaign
MUMBAI: Who says Holi comes just once a year? Licious, India’s leading D2C meat and seafood brand, is bringing the festival of colours to the plate with its latest campaign, Gulaal & Gravy. The visually rich ad film captures the essence of India’s culinary diversity, turning every meal into a celebration of vibrant hues and bold flavours.
The film opens with an irresistible shot steaming basmati rice being drenched in a rich, hearty mutton curry, setting the stage for a feast painted in shades of laal (red), hara (green), bhoora (brown), and peela (yellow). As the poetic narration proclaims, Kaun kehta hai Holi ka din ek hi baar aata hai? Dekho kaise desh mera isse har din manata hai! (Who says Holi comes only once a year? See how my nation celebrates it every day!).
What follows is a rollercoaster of meaty indulgence, Tandoori Tikkas, Attukal Paya Soup, Galauti Kebabs, masaledaar chops, Mutton Dhansak, and an array of fragrant biryanis, each dish representing the rich tapestry of Indian cuisine.
“Holi is about colours, and so is our food,” said Licious founders Abhay Hanjura & Vivek Gupta. “From the fiery reds of Kashmiri Rogan Josh to the golden yellows of Hyderabadi Biryani, the vibrant greens of Karnataka-style mutton chops to Kerala’s creamy coconut-infused Chicken Stew, India’s plates are a never-ending festival of colours. ‘Gulaal & Gravy’ is our ode to this vibrant diversity.”
The film’s tagline, Kashmir se Kanyakumari, Gujarat se Arunachal, chalta rahe India ka ye swaadbhara rangon ka tyohaar (From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and Gujarat to Arunachal, may India’s delicious festival of colours go on forever!) perfectly encapsulates the thought. Because while Holi comes once a year, India’s love affair with bold flavours never stops!
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.
