Ad Campaigns
Mullen Lintas delivers a ‘baap’ for MTV Beats
MUMBAI: From the stable of Viacom18, MTV Beats has had a great start to its journey in India. With its unique positioning and differentiated content offering that is targeted primarily towards the youth, the channel has created quite a niche in the Indian Bollywood music space.
To further popularise the product offering to the Indian masses, the channel has announced the launch of its inaugural brand campaign. Conceptualised and executed by Mullen Lintas Mumbai, the campaign highlights the unique bond that audiences share with music; which is almost like a marriage between two soul mates. That is the core objective with which MTV Beats wants to associate itself with the young viewers of India and be seen as an able partner providing them the best in Hindi music.
Giving a deeper insight into the marketing campaign of Viacom18 MTV Beats youth and english entertainment head Ferzad Palia said, “Music is an important medium to reach out to young people today, and nobody does music better than MTV. So now that MTV Beats is here, we are heralding it as the birth of the ‘BAAP’ of music because after all, MTV is the big daddy of music. In true MTV style, the marketing campaign for MTV Beats is quirky, unabashed and irreverent yet it clearly communicates the brand’s positioning of being the ultimate destination for Hindi music any time of the day or week. I’d like to thank Mullen Lintas for the creative thought they’ve put into this. The tagline – ‘Blood mein hai beat’ draws heavily from India’s obsession with Bollywood music and reinforces the belief that music is a part of every Indian’s very DNA.”
With a tongue-in-cheek referral, the video film tracks the journey of one such ardent lover of music who is literally impregnated with seeds of Bollywood hits. The film is centered around the core idea of a love child being born out of one night of passion between the protagonist who gets turned on by the music being played on TV. The film goes on to explore light-hearted circumstances that get created due to the outcome and how she uses her pregnancy to entertain people. So much so that she turns out to be the life of any event where music is a core ingredient. The day finally arrives and the protagonist becomes proud mother to a wonderful child that’s musically-inclined, and is the source of inspiration to everyone around. This feeling is summed up by the core campaign tagline: Blood mein hain Beat.
Mullen Lintas EVP Ayyappan Raj said, “It’s one of the most fun campaigns that Mullen Lintas Mumbai has worked on in the recent past. When an iconic brand like MTV is launching a Bollywood music channel there is a strong desire to create something big and different. With that in mind, we wanted to make a statement about the launch of Beats and in the quintessential brand tonality. We are very happy with the way the campaign has come together. Also we are quite happy about the fact that we have ‘delivered’ another successful brand launch for the Viacom18 group.”
Highlighting the creative thinking that was arrived for the campaign, Mullen Lintas EC Garima Khandelwal said: “MTV Beats, the offspring. MTV, the parent. A future and a legacy. Bollywood and music ka baap is born. The campaign is aimed to present this storyline, this bloodline. And therefore, to present MTV Beats as the lovechild of MTV and a fan of MTV seemed actually too legit! Enjoy!”
The film has gone live on popular channels and will span other popular offline and online mediums too. While the TVC takes viewers through the story of the birth, the Print and Outdoor initiatives will bring alive the baby through various avatars.
See the promo here
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.
