Ad Campaigns
L&K Saatchi & Saatchi’s ‘Live The Legend’ campaign unveils Hero’s Karizma XMR
Mumbai: L&K Saatchi & Saatchi, a part of Publicis Groupe India, has conceptualized the launch campaign for Hero MotoCorp’s premium and iconic bike Karizma XMR. Titled #LiveTheLegend, the campaign pays homage to the rich legacy of Karizma, known for revolutionising sports biking in the country. This strong nostalgic association and the emotional equity it still enjoys among Indian bikers became the driving force behind the rebirth of this legend.
The launch film honours the bike’s illustrious history and is an ode to the iconicity of the brand which captured the imagination of an entire generation and continues to be loved and revered even today. Narrated by the OG Karizma brand ambassador, actor Hrithik Roshan, the film’s powerful VO instantly strikes an emotional chord and unveils Karizma XMR in its modern and advanced avatar. The film even tips the hat to some of the iconic scenes and memorable advertising from Karizma’s past, including riding into a dust storm.
L&K Saatchi & Saatchi and its digital arm, Saatchi & Saatchi Propagate, also created a compelling buzz campaign, launching the bike with much fanfare and engagement through robust digital activations. The buzz campaign featured Hrithik Roshan and Rannvijay Singha, the two names who had been closely associated with the brand in its glory days.
The #LiveTheLegand campaign marks not just the return of a motorcycle, but also the resurgence of a legend that has inspired generations, turned heads and remained an aspirational ride for all.
L&K Saatchi & Saatchi chief creative officer Kartik Smetacek said, “The one thing that became apparent the moment we started working on this brand was that this is not another bike, this is the Karizma. Even a decade later, the name commands something more than respect, it commands reverence. The campaign sought to harness this brand love, to stir it, grow it and create an aura for the next avatar of this legendary name.”
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.
