
I started compiling the 10 best Indian advertisements since 2021 and share the list on the first Monday of every year. 2025’s first Monday gave me a lot of time to work on my compilation since it falls on the 6th of January 🙂 So, here it goes!
Here are the previous year’s compilations, in case you wanted to check them out: 2023, 2022, and 2021.
As usual, some caveats: how are these the 10 ‘best’? On what basis? As an outsider to these brands, I do not have the details on how these ads ‘performed’ or how much media money was thrown behind them. Neither do you. Those details would be available only with the brand managers, and perhaps the agencies that handle the brands. So, there’s no point in *guessing* the effectiveness and making a fictitious ’10 most effective ads’ list.
This list is also not based on so-called *popularity* based on social media sharing or YouTube views count (both of which can be adequately *engineered* should the brand wants to).
So, what is this list? Simple – these are my 10 personal favorite ads, from the 1,000+ Indian ads I have seen/observed all through 2024. But instead of merely claiming that I *liked* them, I also attemped to explain *why* I liked them. In other words, what went into the crafting of those ads, in terms of the narrative, or the scripting, or the big idea, or the creative device… that made me like them.
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1. Lahori Zeera (Agency: Enormous)
My detailed LinkedIn note on Lahori Zeera ad film.
In the 2023 Top 10 ads list, for the top (first) ad, I had mentioned, “This is easily the most enjoyably inventive Indian ad in 2023” (it was for Brooke Bond Red Label tea – World Social Media Day ad by Ogilvy India). Let me say the same for Lahori Zeera’s ad too – This is easily the most enjoyably inventive Indian ad in 2024!
It’s enjoyable—thoroughly—because of the ad’s unique creative device that exaggerates the usual advertising trope of showing a lot of people enjoying a product. Instead of merely showing people consuming the product the way it is supposed to be, the creative device exaggerates it as being consumed while dpoing something else, a tough ask for a beverage when running, wrestling, shaving, bring shaved, taking a large sofa up the stairs, swimming… you get the drift 🙂
And most of these activities were very desi/Indian in nature, something that fits well within the beverage’s profile of being a ‘desi’ drink, very different from the colas.
2. Adani Group (Agency: Ogilvy India)
My LinkedIn note on the Adani Group ad film where I also had a disagreement with the way a line was phrased, particularly after watching the Tamil/Telugu/Kannada versions of the ad.
This is the kind of ad that is best enjoyed without knowing the brand behind it (and it is revealed only in the end, thankfully, without the corporate logo being omnipresent all through). I did not mention the brand intentionally in my LinkedIn note too, but, for the sake of this compilation, I’m forced to mention it prominently. Sorry for the spoiler 🙂
The narrative technique is not new. The basic idea is to present something, an object or a phrase, as a mystery and heighten the mystery by mounting it repeatedly from multiple perspectives and then offer the reveal in the end. For context, here’s another ad that uses the same technique, for Dacia’s car service, that was released two weeks before the Adani-Ogilvy ad, made by Publicis Conseil.
In the Adani ad, the phrase, ‘Pehle Pankha Aayega, Phir Bijli Aayegi’ is presented as a repetitive catch-phrase loaded with mystery since it beats logic – the power/electicity comes before the fan, after all. But when the reveal happens, it is perfect – both in terms of storytelling and in terms of fitting the brand’s context.
As I had mentioned in my LinkedIn post, the only disagreement I had was with the phrase, ‘Pehle Pankha Aayega, Phir Bijli Aayegi’. Tamtu asks his dad, ‘Bijli kab aayegi aur pankha kab chalega’. So, the most natural response to that from the father, using Tamtu’s own words would be, ‘Pehle pankha chalayenge, phir bijli aayegi’. This is how the Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada phrases are framed. Only in Hindi, ‘aayega’ was opted over ‘chalayenge’.
3. Milton One Touch Casseroles (Agency: Ogilvy India)
My detailed LinkedIn note on Milton’s One Touch Casserole ad film where I also compare it with an earlier ad that uses ‘good news’ as a narrative device.
Normal people do not talk about brands excitedly the way they do in ads. But Ogilvy’s script for Milton’s One Touch Casserole makes a contextual need for the product to be spoken about in excited terms and that’s what makes this a clever ad!
The wife, played by Bangla actor Sauraseni Maitra, is clearly toying with her husband when she drops the phrase ‘good news’, which means something specific in the Indian context. The very smitten husband snaps out of his endless scrolling on his phone (while eating with his wife sitting in front of him – a completely needless addition—also a terrible habit—in this ad, but in the context of making the ‘snapping out’ more obvious and prominent, it helps) and is now hyper alert to what she’s going to say next. But here she is, talking like a model in an ad film, pitching a mere casserole by specifying the brand name! However, it syncs perfectly in terms of the product feature and the need to use that feature if the baby is being held on one hand 🙂
4. Merino Laminates (Agency: Lowe Lintas)
My LinkedIn post on Merino Laminates’ ad.
The pitch for the ad is ‘Be different’. Every brand worth its name across any category wants to claim the same thing. So, to do something interesting in the ‘be different’ theme is almost next to impossible given how many times and ways it has been done and said already. Yet, Lowe Lintas pulls off something rather interesting and entertaining at the same time!
The creative device is whimsical, with excellent sound effects. But it is also perfectly in service of the point being made. If ‘be different’ is the central idea, the narrative exaggerates ‘the same old/very familiar’ in the most comical manner with a device that is intrinsic to most cultures including India.
5. Ramraj (Agency: Vermillion Communications)
My detailed note on LinkedIn about the Ramraj ad film.
Beauitfully written, wonderfully executed ad film! There’s a lot of nuance that I captured in my post on LinkedIn, but the top ones are the freeze-frame technique that helps highlight the product organically while also making the ad visually arresting, and the narrative *thread*, literally – Our culture changes 100 kilometers. Our food habits change every 200 kilometers. Our language changes every 400 kilometers. Our tradition changes every 600 kilometers. And Ramraj is framed as the ‘thread’ that binds us all together’!
6. AJIO print advertising (Agency: In-house)
My LinkedIn post on AJIO’s print ad.
A few brands have tried the guerilla tactic of inserting an innocuous print ad that is aimed at creating online virality. CRED had tried it earlier in December 2022, with tiny classified ads that are dirt cheap, and used micro-influencers online to *seed* the ads without any disclosure that they are being paid to promote these ads online.
But AJIO took it to another level. CRED had one ‘apology notice’ in its series, and AJIO extended it into a full-fledged public apology that cannot be missed (given its size) and was not a tiny classifieds ad either – it was a normal ad.

The language was intentionally flowery and once you got the drift, very funny 🙂 Also, unlike CRED that hid the CRED link by going into great lengths, AJIO made it obvious which brand was behind it. That helped the brand gain from it directly in terms of connection.
The best part was the fact that AJIO confidently released it in just one edition of The Times of India, unlike CRED. That showed that they were trying this as a guerilla experiment to see if an obvious spoof of an ad would be talked about online. Bold, sneaky idea!
7. Swiggy (Creative agency: In-house)
My LinkedIn note on Swiggy’s Mango ad that also includes a list of other scent-based ads.
The second print ad in this list! Barring the fact that this was a scented ad in Mumbai (a tactic already done adequately by many brands in India in conjunction with The Times of India), what caught me more was the writing.

I was seeing this ad in the epaper version, in Bengaluru. No scent, just a screen. But the line, ‘Read this ad with your nose’ is what clicked instantly with me. It made me *recall* the scent of mangoes from my memory, almost like how you think of an elephant even when told, ‘Do not think of an elephant’ 🙂
8. Colgate (Agency: Ogilvy India)
My LinkedIn post on Colgate’s ad promoting brushing in the night.
It’s good to see Colgate continue to work on their campaign to promote brushing before sleeping given that many/most Indians are not used to this habit, particularly while also enjoying their ‘meetha’ after dinner!
If the earlier ad campaign (in October 2023) heightened the need for brushing in the night with a stupendously exaggerated visual device (it was No. 4 in my list of top 10 ads of 2023), the new campaign uses a sleight of hand tactic to grab attention – Colgate selling sinfully exciting food items 🙂
9. WD-40 (Agency: Sideways Consulting)
My LinkedIn post on WD-40’s ad series of very short 6-second ads!
In terms of ingenuity and writing, this series is one of the best of 2024! Not only does the agency showcase tangible use-case of the product but they also manage to infuse a funny ending for each use-case, and all this within 6 seconds per ad!
It’s clear that a lot of thinking has gone into crafting every second of those 6 seconds, and the sound effects add to the charm considerably!
10. Zomato Diwali (Agency: In-house)
My LinkedIn note on Zomato’s Diwali 2024 ad.
Zomato’s communication is a standard on its own by now. Even when people see the Zepto Soan Papdi ad, they think, ‘Seems like a Zomato ad’ 🙂 The brand’s in-house work has created such an impact that it has become uniquely identifiable as Zomato’s!
Within that template, the Diwali ad that parodies a popular Diwali meme is smartly written and hilariously executed in terms of production. The choice of Piyush Mishra to headline the ad was brilliant – he brings gravitas even to the spoofy humor of the ad by being fully committed to the tomfoolery on display (the way he goes, ‘Arey bachchon!!’ was brilliant)! And there are many tiny nuances hidden in the ad, with the Zomato team confident that people would find it and share it among themselves. My favorite was ‘Satya NASA’ 🙂