The best Indian marketing campaigns include Amul's Utterly Butterly topicals (1966), Surf Excel's Daag Acche Hain (2005), Tata Tea's Jaago Re (2008), the 2015 Maggi relaunch, Reliance Jio's free-launch offer (2016) and CRED's Indiranagar ka Gunda films (2021). Each paired a sharp idea with measurable results, from 100 million Jio subscribers in 170 days to Maggi's recovery to about 60% market share.
By the Everything-PR Editorial Team
Published October 29, 2026. Last updated October 29, 2026.
The six campaigns below were chosen for a documented date, a named brand or agency team and a result reported by a trade publication or the company. The order is chronological, not a ranking.
| Campaign | Brand | Year | Agency or team | Reported result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Utterly Butterly topicals | Amul | 1966 | Sylvester daCunha (ASP, later daCunha) | More than 4,000 ads produced by 2018 |
| Daag Acche Hain | Surf Excel | 2005 | Lowe Lintas, led by Arun Iyer | Still the brand's core proposition in 2020 |
| Jaago Re | Tata Tea | 2008 | Lowe Lintas, Arc Worldwide, Madison Media | Almost 250,000 online voter registrations |
| We Missed You Too | Maggi | 2015 to 2016 | Nestle India | About 60% market share by August 2018 |
| Free voice and data launch | Reliance Jio | 2016 | Reliance Jio | 100 million customers in 170 days |
| Great for the Good | CRED | 2021 | CRED | Most viral ad of IPL 2021 |
Amul's Utterly Butterly campaign became India's longest-running ad campaign because its topical hoardings comment on the news of the week with a pun, so the creative never goes stale. Sylvester daCunha, then managing director of the agency ASP, took on the Amul butter account in 1966 and met Verghese Kurien, the architect of India's White Revolution, according to YourStory's profile of the Amul girl.
The first topical ad ran in March 1966 and played on a horse-racing derby in Mumbai with the line "Thoroughbread". The idea centered on a girl in a polka-dotted dress and the line "Utterly Butterly Delicious". Rahul daCunha took over the creative work in the early 1990s. By 2018, more than 4,000 ads had been produced, and the pace had moved from one a month to four or five a week in the age of Twitter, according to an AFP report in Malay Mail. Trade outlet afaqs reports that the campaign holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running advertising campaign.
The marketing lesson is consistency with fresh content. The mascot, the baseline and the outdoor format stayed fixed, while each week's joke gave people a new reason to look.
Surf Excel turned stains into a brand idea by reframing dirt as the by-product of childhood play, with the 2005 line "Daag Acche Hain" (stains are good). The Indian campaign was created by Lowe Lintas as a local version of Unilever's global "Dirt Is Good" platform, and the first film featured two siblings and a puddle, according to Business Insider India's interview with Arun Iyer.
Iyer of Lowe Lintas told the publication that the brand's growth had stagnated before the work began and that the groundwork was done in 2004. At the time, most detergent advertising was about removing "ziddi daag", or stubborn stains. Surf Excel moved the conversation from cleaning power to what a stain means. The proposition was still the brand's core idea in 2020, and later films extended it to festivals such as Holi.
The marketing lesson is that a category built on function can be won with emotion, if the emotion is tied to the product benefit. A stain is proof of a good day, and that is why a detergent can talk about it.
Tata Tea's Jaago Re linked tea to voting by turning the "wake up" idea into a civic call and giving viewers a tool to act on it. The Lowe Lintas campaign began in 2007, and its 2008 phase, Jaago Re! One Billion Votes, centered on jaagore.com, a voter registration engine built by the digital agency Arc Worldwide, according to afaqs's Effies 2009 report.
The site let people fill in a registration form online and print it for submission, because the government did not accept online registrations at the time. Almost 250,000 young people registered through the site, according to Business Standard's brand report. The campaign was shortlisted at the 2009 Effies in the Consumer Products and Integrated Advertising Campaign categories, and afaqs reported more than 86% recognition and about 98% brand association among its target audiences.
The marketing lesson is that purpose works best when it comes with a useful action. The ad asked people to wake up, and the website showed them how.
Maggi won back Indian shoppers by withdrawing the product, relaunching it in November 2015 and speaking to consumers with an emotional "We Missed You Too" message. India's food regulator announced the ban on June 5, 2015, and Nestle India withdrew the product, according to Business Standard's reporting on the recovery. The product returned after about five months with the formulation unchanged.
The recovery was fast. According to Nestle India's investor presentation, reported by India Retailing's market share report, Maggi held 10.9% of the instant noodles market in November 2015 and 35.2% in December. It reached 51% in March 2016 and 57% in June 2016. Before the ban, its share was about 75%. Nestle India chairman Suresh Narayanan later said the brand had reached a little over 60%, in a statement reported by Business Today's August 2018 story.
The marketing lesson is that crisis recovery is a communications and distribution job at once. For more on how brands handle these moments, see EPR's crisis PR coverage.
Reliance Jio reached 100 million users in 170 days by launching with free voice calls and free data, which removed the price barrier for first-time 4G users. Chairman Mukesh Ambani announced the milestone in February 2017, saying Jio had added about seven customers every second since its September 5, 2016 launch, according to YourStory's report on the announcement.
Jio had crossed 50 million subscribers in 83 days, according to company figures reported at the time. Ambani credited Aadhaar-based eKYC activation for making sign-ups fast. Rival operators challenged the free offer before the telecom regulator, TRAI, arguing that free services beyond 90 days broke the rules. When the promotional period ended, Jio moved existing users to its Prime membership.
The marketing lesson is that a product offer can be the campaign. The free launch created queues, word of mouth and press coverage without a conventional brand film.
CRED's Rahul Dravid ad went viral because it showed one of cricket's calmest figures as an angry Bengaluru road-rage character shouting "Indiranagar ka gunda hoon main". The film opened CRED's six-film "Great for the Good" series on April 9, 2021, just ahead of IPL 2021, according to exchange4media's launch coverage.
Virat Kohli tweeted that he had never seen this side of Dravid, and brands including Zomato, OYO and CARS24 posted their own replies the same day, as afaqs documented. A report by the agency Wavemaker named it the most viral ad of IPL 2021, according to Business Insider India's Wavemaker story. CRED was valued at $2.2 billion at the time, according to Business Insider India.
The marketing lesson is surprise. A trusted celebrity doing something out of character gave other brands and fans something to react to.
These six campaigns share five traits that other brands can copy:
Everything-PR covers Indian communications from several angles. For agencies, see PR firms in India. For festival work, see the Diwali marketing campaigns. For entertainment, see Bollywood's top PR firms and the ten Bollywood PR campaigns. For AI search, see the Indian brand AI visibility index, and for more studies see EPR research.
Amul's Utterly Butterly campaign, which began in 1966 and was still running in 2018 with four or five new ads a week. Trade outlet afaqs reports it holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running advertising campaign.
Lowe Lintas created the Indian campaign in 2005 under Arun Iyer, as a local version of Unilever's global Dirt Is Good platform.
Almost 250,000 young people registered through jaagore.com, according to Business Standard. Other sources quote higher figures, so treat the number as the lowest reported total.
Maggi returned in November 2015 and held 57% of the instant noodles market by June 2016, according to Nestle India's investor presentation. Nestle India reported a little over 60% in August 2018, against about 75% before the ban.
Jio reached 50 million subscribers in 83 days and 100 million in 170 days after its September 5, 2016 launch, according to company figures reported by YourStory and others.
It cast a famously calm cricketer in an out-of-character role, launched hours before IPL 2021 and prompted replies from other brands. Wavemaker named it the most viral ad of the season.
Festival campaigns such as Diwali and Holi work best when the brand idea fits the occasion, as Surf Excel does with Holi. EPR's Diwali campaigns page covers more examples.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team is the staff byline for news, analysis and features on communications, reputation, AI visibility and digital discovery. Everything-PR has published since 2009. AI tools assist with research and drafting, and every article is reviewed by a human editor before publication. Coverage follows the Editorial Policy, and substantive corrections are noted on the article under the Corrections Policy.
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