Ad Campaigns
Pepsi Black new campaign celebrates balance between taste & health
Mumbai: Pepsi for the first time, launches a brand campaign for its zero-calorie variant Pepsi Black featuring bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez. The new “Max Taste with Zero Sugar” campaign celebrates the balance of taste and health. The campaign recreates Pepsi’s most iconic Cindy Crawford commercial with Bollywood actor Jacqueline Fernandez.
The film is set at a secluded vintage gas station where two young boys are seen filling their tanks. A girl on a bike soon pulls over at the gas station. She is then seen parking her bike and removing her helmet only to reveal that the girl on the bike is Jacqueline Fernandez, sporting cut-off jean shorts and white tank top. The film shows Jacqueline taking a swig from the Pepsi Black can. The boys are seen being awestruck, and the film keeps you guessing whether they are enthralled by Jacqueline’s presence or by the new Pepsi Black can – only to innocently reveal that all this while the boys were mesmerised by new Pepsi Black. The captivating film ends by reinstating that new Pepsi Black promises you maximum taste with zero sugar.
The new Pepsi Black takes the brand’s commitment to constant innovation and reiterates its belief of ‘Winning with pep+.’ The new Pepsi Black TVC will be amplified via a robust 360-degree campaign spanning TV, digital, outdoor, and social media. The new matte cans are available across all modern and traditional retail outlets in India, as well as on leading e-commerce platforms.
Speaking on the launch, PepsiCo India category lead – Pepsi Cola Saumya Rathor said, “With more and more people looking for sugar-free alternatives especially post the pandemic, and with an intent to bring more positive choices to our consumers, we are all geared to launch the new Pepsi Black that brings max taste with no sugar.”
“It has also been wonderful to collaborate once again with the beautiful Jacqueline Fernandez who fit perfectly into our vision of recreating the iconic Cindy Crawford commercial. We are confident that this campaign will make waves here as it did globally and will be loved by our audiences,” she further added.
Commenting on the new film, Jacqueline Fernandez said, “I have always admired the iconic Pepsi commercial and have always looked forward to collaborating with the brand. It has been very special to recreate the timeless Cindy Crawford ad and I am honoured to bring this to life for the new SWAG generation of today. It’s been great shooting for this commercial and I am certain that the new Pepsi Black with zero sugar is going to appeal to consumers across India, like it did to me.”
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.
