Ad Campaigns
The sound of silence in TV ads
NEW DELHI: Procter & Gamble’s detergent brand Ariel has continuously sparked conversation around household chores in the past. Now, the brand has come up with a new season of its ‘share the load’ campaign. The advertisement is conceptualised by advertising agency BBDO. This time the brand has urged all family members to contribute and share the load in household chores. However, what distinguishes it from the earlier campaigns is, there is no exchange of dialogue between family members. The brand has followed the route of silence to depict the message powerfully with visual elements.
The film has already crossed 10 million views so far. P&G India and head CMO Sharat Verma says, “We believe there is something beautiful when a son, father or husband comes forward to #ShareTheLoad. Which is why Ariel has continued to raise pertinent conversations to encourage more and more men to participate in household chores.”
The brand started bringing up these torchbearer conversations from 2015. The first ad which gained a lot of traction was, “Is laundry only a woman’s job”, while in 2016 it touched an important issue of doing household work from one generation to another with ‘Dads Share The Load’ movement. Last year, too, the brand focussed on an essential issue, “Are we teaching our sons what we are teaching our daughters” with Sons #ShareTheLoad. In the new campaign, ShareThe Load for Equal Sleep, it highlighted the impact of the unequal division of chores on housewives.
The concept of silent advertising is not new. The craze for such ads began in the 1990s but disappeared later in the 2000s as brands started getting more vocal. Nevertheless, with time we are seeing brands following the nuances of silent ads once again. Fevicol ads barely came with dialogues and it has always connected with consumers because of its simplicity and humorous execution. Right from Camlin permanent markers to Pidilite M-seal or the recent Haier TVC silent performers’ ad highlighting Haier’s long-standing relationship with the Indian consumers, brands have started experimenting with their advertising communication.
We have seen silent advertising being used globally as well. Last year, UK broadcaster ITV released a campaign on the rising issue of anxiety and depression in children. The ad ends with a message to “tune back in” to their family’s story. European footwear brand Bianco came up with an interesting silent love story in the form of a short film The Lift, urging everyone to start a conversation.
India too has seen a resurgence of silent ads. One reason could be its differentiating factor that helps brands rise above the noise, increasing attention and recall.
Makani Creatives, co-founder and MD Sameer Makani believes, “For an ad to be effective it needs to grab the user’s attention in two to three seconds and audio is a crucial part of the experience.”
However, consumption patterns have evolved and social media has become a key platform for communication and content viewing. Most of these platforms have muted audio as default for any ad until the user chooses to turn it on.
“Keeping this aspect in mind, brands are experimenting with no-audio crisp ads. The concept is different from a usual ad and one cannot draw parallels between the two. It’s a double-edged sword when a brand experiments with such content. The screenplay and plot need to be extremely strong to create impact. Otherwise, it may miss yielding any results for the brand,” Makhani explains.
FCB Ulka group creative director Anusheela Saha says, “Silence, when applied judiciously and appropriately, can be a strong persuasive thought communication, and in Ariel’s case, it works really well. They have made a montage of their previous ads and have thoughtfully edited and crafted the message to make it relevant for today. In today’s time, when women are the silent bearers of additional home duties, a silent ode to them only resonates more beautifully.”
However, Taproot Dentsu executive creative director Pallavi Chakravarti raises a pertinent point. Is there evidence that silent ad will work better than one with spoken words? Says she: “I don’t think one can make a blanket statement about how silent ads work versus regular ads. Every ad works or doesn’t on its own merits. There’s no guarantee that just because you have dialogues in your ad, you’ll make an instant connection with your audience. By that logic, every commercial should be a runaway hit. Equally, there’s no proof that a silent ad will work better – it could just pass like a ship in the night.”
“Ariel’s ad works, to my mind, because it is consistent with the messaging that the brand has put out for many years now. The team has successfully built the share the load property from the day it was first launched, so we don’t need dialogues to understand the message, in this case,” she elaborates.
Scarecrow M&C Saatchi founder Raghu Bhatt points out that if silent films can tell a story, silent ads can too. “In India, we have seen many successful zero-dialogue films for brands like Allout and Cherry Blossom. Coming to this ad, it’s like a reminder film. There is no story but a collage of couples sharing the washing chores. Simple storyboards that don’t require the expert supervision of an ace director- seem to be the norm, due to shooting restrictions.”
That may be the case this time with the new Ariel TVC, however, silent ads can work well to make your brand be heard.
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.
