Ad Campaigns
Old Spice deo ‘Smell Mantastic’ campaign for another 8 weeks
BENGALURU: Old Spice is one of the few brands that most Indians have grown up with. Procter and Gamble India (P&G) recently added a line of deodorants to the brand that has essentially been associated with shaving until now.
An online campaign ‘Smell Mantastic’, starting with what P&G calls the ‘North video’ created by Old Spice’s global creative agency Wieden+Kenedy starring model and marathoner and Old Spice’s Indian face Milind Soman, that was launched on 15 October has already garnered 20 lakh (2 million) views on YouTube.
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Subsequently, an ‘East Video’ was launched in Kolkata that has been followed by a ‘South Video’ in Bengaluru today. P&G says that both the East and South videos have had over nine lakh views already. Another video – the ‘West Video’ is slated for launch somewhere around 19 November. In the Old Spice videos, Soman has donned different avatars of an Indian man across geographies.
“This campaign will continue for the next two months,” revealed a source at P&G
A fifteen second TVC is also being aired on niche channels such as HBO and the Star Network’s movie channels amongst others. Tomorrow, a radio chat with Soman will be aired in Mumbai on Radio One informed the source.
Sonman with Vidyut Jammwal unveiled the Old Spice deo range in New Delhi, in Kolkata the range was unveiled by Soman and Rahul Bose and in Bengaluru, P&G had Soman and Diganth on the stage for the unveiling. “We have not yet decided on the person who will be unveiling the range with Soman in Mumbai on 19 November as yet,” revealed the source further.
MediaCom handles the conventional media buying duties, while Interface Business Solutions (IBS) handles the online media duties for P&G’s Old Spice brand.
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.
