Ad Campaigns
This Independence Day, McDonald’s tells you the story of the #TrulyIndianBurger
MUMBAI: McDonald’s is often looked at as the quintessential ‘western brand’. This often leads people to assume that the house favourite burgers from McDonald’s India are also ‘western’ in their origin.
In an attempt to bust this myth and create awareness about the sourcing story and Indian origin of McDonald’s India’s food, this Independence Day, Hardcastle Restaurants Pvt. Ltd. (HRPL), the master franchisee of McDonald’s in West and South India, is telling the fascinating story of the “Truly Indian Burger”. Conceptualized and executed by the 22feet Tribal Worldwide, the ‘Truly Indian Burger’ campaign explains how the McDonald’s burgers are an amalgamation of the best agricultural produce from across India.
Led by three 15-seconder digital films, the campaign is being further supported by an interactive microsite (best experienced on mobile handsets) which tells the sourcing stories of key ingredients of McDonald’s food products in an engaging way. People visiting restaurants can simply scan the QR Code on the tray-mat to know the sourcing story of their favourite burger. The campaign has cumulatively reached over 1 million people.
A person sitting at a table
Description automatically generatedEach time you bite into your favourite McVeggie Burger, aren’t you thrilled to taste the fresh, crunchy lettuce? It’s no ordinary lettuce, but the Iceberg variety which makes its way to your plate from the mountains of the Nilgiris. Fun fact – McDonald’s pioneered lettuce farming in India. There was no locally-grown good-quality lettuce available in India till McDonald’s introduced it into farming in India.
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The second film- Jalapenos, talk about the burst of flavour every time you bite into the jalapenos in your Maharaja Mac burger. Where do you guess McDonald’s gets those from? Mexico? Spain? Naah! These spicy jalapenos in your burger come from the state of Karnataka. Mind-blowing, isn’t it?
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What about everyone’s favourite McAloo Tikki? Have you wondered what makes it so special? The delectable burger that’s now a global favourite is made from potatoes grown exclusively for McDonald’s India in the state of Gujarat. And the Whole Wheat Buns, that everyone loves so much, are from Maharashtra! This story has been aptly captured in the campaign’s third film.
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So, there is a bit of India in every bite of your delicious McDonald’s burger!
Speaking on the campaign, Arvind RP, Director –Marketing and Communications, HRPL said, “Our goal has always been to only use the best and the freshest ingredients to make the food we serve. To ensure this, over the years, we have invested significantly to bring in global best practices and the latest farming technologies to India that empower our farmers to locally grow and produce world-class ingredients.”
They say that Unity in Diversity is the true representation of Indian culture. And this Independence Day, McDonald’s India is celebrating the diversity of its ingredients. Because why not! After all, these burgers are as Indian as they get.
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.
