Ad Campaigns
Mountain Dew fuels gaming culture in India
MUMBAI: PepsiCo India today announced the launch of Mountain Dew Game Fuel in India – an exciting new and bold variant. Unveiled at a high decibel launch conference in Delhi, Game Fuel encourages you to take challenges head-on, test your limits and unleash the hero within you.
As part of the grand launch, Mountain Dew announced the Dew Arena – India’s largest ever gaming championship that aims to engage 30,000+ participants during the entire campaign for a thrilling gaming experience by switching the ‘Hero Mode On’.
The world of gaming empowers you to take on risks and challenges that allow you to experience the thrill and exhilaration of that extraordinary life, every day. The Dew Arena is a unique 9-week gaming championship which will give the best gamers in India a chance to have their profile on the Mountain Dew Game Fuel bottle, in addition to the prize pool worth INR 10 Lakhs.
Game Fuel will also reach out to gaming enthusiasts physically in the form of a massive, 50-city gaming truck activation. The culmination of these events will result in the Dew Arena finale on September 25, 2016, among the best gamers of the country. Mountain Dew Game Fuel is also giving consumers an opportunity to win an ‘Xbox One’ every day.
Speaking at the launch of Mountain Dew Game Fuel and The Dew Arena, Vipul Prakash, Vice President, Beverage Category, PepsiCo Indiasaid, “Innovation is a key driver for Mountain Dew and we have always focused on connecting with consumers in a contextually relevant manner. Mountain Dew Game Fuel is a popular franchise globally and we are excited to add it to our India portfolio. Since gaming in India is gaining exponential popularity across platforms, the Dew Arena has been created to give enthusiasts a change to switch their Hero Mode On and unleash the hero within.”
Priyadarshi Mohapatra, Country General Manager, Consumer Channel Group, Microsoft India, said, “Gaming, especially Social Gaming, is growing exponentially among Indian audiences. We have consistently received overwhelming response for our Xbox One releases in the country, underlining the expansion of the gaming community in India. We are committed to delivering unmatched and memorable experiences to Indian gamers and our partnership with PepsiCo for Mountain Dew Game Fuel is a step in that direction. We are confident that the platform will attract, and appeal to, the growing Indian gaming community.”
Available in 600 ML PET bottle and 250 ml can, Mountain Dew Game Fuel is priced at Rs. 35 and 25, respectively.
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.
