An iPhone saves a Maharaja! Nikhil Chawla on Apple’s first ever India-first comms campaign

Let's get one thing out of the way first. Global brands have been "doing India" for a very long time, and most of them do it exactly the same way. Take an existing global spot, swap the cast, add a sari and a dholak, localise the voiceover, and call it culturally resonant. It is, at best, translation. It is nowhere close to transformation.

Apple's new Drumbeats campaign, launched riding the wave of the Indian Premier League, is something meaningfully different. It deserves to be examined not just as advertising, but as a communications strategy. Because what Apple has done here is arguably the most sophisticated proof of product-market commitment the brand has ever made in India.

The setup is deceptively simple

Six films. Fifteen seconds each. A royal court in a grand Indian palace. A nervous messenger. A King or Queen on a throne. A crisis. And then an iPhone feature steps in and saves the day, with the kind of deadpan comedic timing that actually lands.

'Find My' locates something that has gone missing. Centre Stage rescues an embarrassing moment. Visual Intelligence identifies what no one in the room can figure out. Dual Capture does two things at once. Fast Charging does exactly what it says, at exactly the moment it is needed most

The films are fast, funny, and distinctly Indian in their theatrical flair. The dramaturgy of a royal court, the loyal but hapless messenger, the absurd stakes. None of it is trying to be Western. None of it is doing that awkward reaching-for-aspirational thing that Indian luxury advertising sometimes falls into. It is confident enough to be comic. And honestly, that confidence is doing a lot of the work here.

"It is not trying to be Western. It is confident enough to be comic. And that confidence is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here."

Why the IPL peg matters more than it looks

Timing in communications is everything, and Apple did not just buy IPL airtime. They built a campaign specifically designed to live in that environment. The six-film format, the punchy 15-second length, the high-energy comedic universe — this is content that was architected for the biggest, noisiest, most-watched sporting event in India. That is not an accident. That is strategy working exactly as it should.

The IPL audience crossed 600 million viewers across platforms last season. If Apple wanted to put iPhone at the centre of a national conversation, there is arguably no better vehicle in the country. And rather than simply showing up, they showed up with a creative idea rooted entirely in India's own cultural grammar. 

The features are the characters. That is the clever bit

Feature advertising is notoriously hard to get right. Done badly, it becomes a spec sheet with a jingle. Done well, it makes you feel the utility before you have ever read the fine print.

What Apple has done with Drumbeats is build each film around a single feature's emotional payoff, not its technical description. You do not need to know that Fast Charging gets the phone to 50% in 20 minutes to feel the relief in the story. 

You do not need to understand the 18MP front camera sensor to appreciate what Centre Stage means when you are trying to fit everyone into a group photo. The product demos itself through narrative, not narration. That is a fundamental difference, and it is why this campaign will still be remembered when most IPL spots have been forgotten by the time the playoffs begin.

This is really about converting Android users to Apple

Apple's India numbers have been growing, but the real headroom sits in the Android switcher segment. A massive, discerning, value-conscious audience that has needed a reason, not just an aspiration, to make the move. Aspirational advertising has tried to bridge that gap and only partially succeeded. What Drumbeats does differently is make the case on specifics.

Each film is a 15-second answer to the question every potential switcher is quietly asking: "But what does it actually do that my current phone doesn't?"

That is not brand advertising. This is conversion advertising dressed up as brand advertising. And the IPL context, where millions of exactly those potential switchers are watching together, makes the targeting almost absurdly precise.

The PR dimension: why this earns attention beyond paid media

From a communications standpoint, the campaign is smart on multiple levels. First, it is genuinely talkable. The comedy, the Indian palace setting, the messenger's ever-worsening predicament are shareable, memeable, and genuinely discussable. It is the kind of campaign that PR professionals love because it generates earned conversation without needing to be engineered for virality.

Second, and this is the part I find most interesting, it signals something important about Apple's commitment to India as a market. Not a market to be adapted for, but a market to be created in. When a brand of Apple's stature shoots original films in India, sets them in an Indian palace, and builds a story that could only have been told here, that itself becomes news. It is a statement of intent that no press release could communicate half as efficiently.

"When a brand of Apple's stature shoots original films in India, set in an Indian palace, with a story that could only have been told here, that itself becomes news. It is a statement of intent that no press release could communicate half as efficiently."

The author is a creator and works as a communications and brand strategy consultant. Views are personal.