Ad Campaigns
McCann Erickson’s Happy Dent ad one of 20th century’s best ads: Gunns Report
MUMBAI: It’s a proud moment for McCann Erickson, Mumbai as the agency’s Happy Dent Teeth Whitening Gum Happy Dent Palace ad has been shortlisted as one of the 20 best ads of the 21st century.
This list was compiled after The Gunn Report ran a popular poll asking readers to choose ten ads each from a pre-selected list of 30. McCann Erickson Mumbai is the only agency from India to have had its work shortlisted in the compilation.
“Very rarely do you see an advertisement reaching a level when it is considered as historical in the international stage. I am happy that my work has appeared as all time top 20 in 21st Century. I am honoured and deeply moved,” an elated McCann Worldgroup Asia Pacific chairman Prasoon Joshi tells Indiantelevision.com.
The advertisement shows utopian India in its bygone eras (possibly the 20th Century) when bright shiny teeth are source of light for people after sunset, and people replace street lights and even chandeliers!
This quirky, outlandish and downright hilarious concept for an ad that speaks of a teeth whitening candy gum devised primarily for electronic medium immediately went viral after its television release.
Joshi points out that the ad doesn’t take itself seriously and that is exactly what has worked in favour of the TVC.
“It knows it is a gag for a product in the impulse purchase category. It’s for a chewing gum and it doesn’t take itself seriously, and that drew people in,” Joshi adds with a chuckle. Other nuances that helped it cut above the noise was it’s fun storytelling, beautiful and catchy music. “Somewhere it appeals to the fantastical and escapist side of the consumers. What if the world was like this? What if this could happen? The ad tends to urge us to imagine out of the box. On top of it is very focused about what it is trying to say about the product,” he adds.
Joshi also informs that being in a prestigious list or winning an award wasn’t on his mind at all when penning down the concept for the advertisement.
“Awards and rankings are not what we aim for when creating ads. When writing the script of this one, I was more immersed in it than anything. When awards follow it definitely inspires us to do better and encourages us, but that is never the end goal,” he says.
Recalling the time the ad was launched, Joshi further adds that it initially released as any other advertisement and then gradually gained popularity as well as critical appreciation by winning advertising awards at Cannes. “Then people started circulating it through mails, talking about it and it became viral on its own right,” Joshi says, with a look ahead to keep creating more ‘timeless ads.’
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.
