Kurkure and the Anniversary That Went 'Out of Control': The Story of the New LTO Flavours Campaign

It is a wedding anniversary. The kind of evening that has been carefully planned — the guests invited, the table set, the atmosphere warm with the particular glow of a milestone being celebrated among people who love each other. The couple at the centre of it all are about to exchange gifts.

She opens hers first. Inside the box: a diamond necklace. Her face lights up. She is thrilled, touched, everything a gift like this is supposed to make you feel.

Then he opens his.

Inside the box: two packets of Kurkure. The new limited-time flavours — Out of Control Chaat and Uncensored Tadka.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naLXp60_Wwg

He does not pause to admire them. He does not set them aside for later. He tears one open immediately, with the undisguised enthusiasm of a man who has just received exactly what he wanted. The guests watch. She watches. And then — distracted completely by the flavours that have taken over his senses — he turns to her with the necklace gleaming around her neck and offers his honest, heartfelt compliment.

He tells her she looks chatpati. And masaledaar.

The room freezes. And then, the next morning, wide-eyed and slightly mortified, he snaps back to reality and understands what happened to him. It was the Kurkure. It was always the Kurkure. The new flavours had simply unleashed his most unpredictable, most hatke self — right there, in front of everyone.

This was the 60-second TVC at the heart of Kurkure's April 2021 campaign for its new Limited-Time Offerings — and from the first frame to the last, it was unmistakably, irresistibly Kurkure.

The Brief Behind the Bite

PepsiCo India's Kurkure — one of eight brands in the company's India portfolio each generating over INR 1,000 crore in annual estimated retail sales — launched two new limited-time innovations in April 2021: Out of Control Chaat and Uncensored Tadka. Both flavours were designed to offer what the brand called "unpredictable taste surprises" — sensations so distinct and so unexpected that they could, in the logic of the campaign, fundamentally alter your behaviour.

The creative idea was rooted in a genuine consumer insight. As Bhagyashree Navare, Associate Director and Category Head for Kurkure and Cheetos at PepsiCo India, explained: "Our LTO campaign is based on the insight that when you taste something truly lip-smacking and different from what you expect, you can react in unpredictable ways, making the situation full of fun and entertainment."

The campaign was developed by Wunderman Thompson India — led by Ritu Nakra, WPP Lead for PepsiCo Foods — and featured Kurkure's long-standing brand ambassador Akshay Kumar alongside popular television actress Kritika Kamra. The 60-second TVC was directed by Uzer Khan.

Both flavours were made available at INR 5 and INR 10 price points across leading retail and e-commerce platforms in India — keeping them accessible to Kurkure's broad, price-sensitive consumer base.

What Made the Film Tick

The genius of the 60-second TVC was its precision. Every element — the anniversary setting, the contrast between the two gifts, Akshay Kumar's comic timing, the word chatpati — was engineered to land in a specific sequence. The film understood that comedy, like flavour, is about surprise. You have to build an expectation first. And then you have to subvert it at exactly the right moment.

The anniversary setting was the setup. A romantic occasion, filled with social expectation and the implicit understanding that the right things will be said and done. The diamond necklace established those stakes — this was a man who knew how to show up for his wife. And then the Kurkure arrived. And all bets were off.

Akshay Kumar, whose own screen persona is built on a foundation of lovable unpredictability and quick-footed humour, was the ideal vessel for this premise. His gift of comic timing — the involuntary munch, the distracted glance, the earnestly delivered chatpati — carried the film's central joke to its destination without a moment of overreach. He didn't play it broad. He played it honest. And that made it funnier.

Kritika Kamra's reaction — the pause, the stare, the controlled incredulity of a woman trying to process what has just been said to her — was equally important. Comedy of this kind is a dialogue. The straight character's response is as much the punchline as the line itself.

The film also benefited enormously from what happened around it. During the TVC shoot, behind-the-scenes footage went viral on social media — footage in which Kamra was seen making a candid comment about the director, Uzer Khan, suggesting he wasn't putting in enough effort. The clip spread rapidly. Speculation followed. And then Kamra stepped in with a clarification that was, itself, a piece of the campaign's storytelling: it was the new Kurkure flavours, she said, that had made her go Out of Control and Uncensored enough to make that comment. The clarification became a content moment. The campaign had stepped off the screen and into real life — exactly the kind of organic extension that money cannot buy.

Five Lessons We Should Learn From This Campaign

1. Ground Your Campaign in a Real Human Truth

The LTO campaign did not manufacture a story from nothing. It found a truth that anyone who has ever tasted something unexpectedly delicious will immediately recognise: flavour can override your filter. A bite of something extraordinary can make you say something you didn't mean to say, laugh at something you shouldn't, lose the thread of a conversation you were supposed to be paying attention to. Kurkure took that lived reality and dramatised it in the most memorable way possible — a diamond necklace upstaged by a packet of chips.

The lesson: the most effective creative ideas do not invent human behaviour. They observe it, name it, and then blow it up to a scale that makes audiences recognise themselves and laugh.

2. The Product Insight and the Story Insight Must Be the Same Thing

The two new flavours were named Out of Control Chaat and Uncensored Tadka. And the film's central joke was that they made the person eating them go — out of control. Uncensored. The product's names were not decorative labels. They were the creative brief. The flavours described an experience, and the TVC dramatised that experience with complete fidelity. Every element of the story — the setting, the dialogue, the character's behaviour — flowed directly from what the product was claiming to be.

The lesson: the best product launches are those where the naming, the product truth, and the creative idea are inseparable from each other. When the story could only have been told for this specific product, you know you have found the right idea.

3. Comic Timing Is a Media Strategy

The choice of Akshay Kumar as Kurkure's brand ambassador has never been about celebrity wattage alone. It has always been about fit. Kumar's particular form of comedy — quick, warm, rooted in domestic situations, never mean-spirited — is precisely the register in which Kurkure has always operated. The brand does not do sarcasm. It does not do edge. It does warmth and chaos and the specific joy of ordinary moments going gloriously off-script.

Kumar's delivery of chatpati and masaledaar as sincere compliments — offered with complete conviction in the middle of an anniversary dinner — required exactly the kind of comic instinct he has built a career on. A different actor might have winked at the audience, breaking the spell. Kumar played it straight, and the joke held.

The lesson: when casting for a campaign, do not ask which celebrity is most famous. Ask which celebrity's natural persona most closely matches the brand's emotional register. The right fit will do more for a campaign than any amount of fame alone.

4. Earned Media Multiplies Paid Media — But Only If the Brand Stays Ready

The behind-the-scenes clip of Kritika Kamra commenting on director Uzer Khan could have been a crisis. A disgruntled actress. A troubled shoot. Negative press. Instead, it became a gift — because the campaign had the self-awareness and the wit to fold the incident into its own narrative. Kamra's clarification, that the new Kurkure flavours had made her go Out of Control and Uncensored, transformed a potential PR headache into a piece of organic content that extended the film's central joke into real life.

This did not happen by accident. It required a team alert enough to recognise the opportunity and nimble enough to respond before the moment passed. The lesson: great campaigns do not end when the TVC airs. They create a universe — a set of ideas and characters and situations — that can absorb real-world events and keep generating meaning. Brands that are prepared for this kind of agility can turn almost anything into a continuation of the story.

5. Accessibility Is Not an Afterthought — It Is the Strategy

The Out of Control Chaat and Uncensored Tadka flavours were priced at INR 5 and INR 10. In a country as vast and economically diverse as India, where the impulse purchase of a snack is a democratic pleasure available to almost everyone, this pricing was not incidental. It was structural. A TVC featuring Akshay Kumar, aired nationally, creates desire. The INR 5 price point ensures that the desire can be acted upon — immediately, by almost anyone, at almost any retail outlet in the country.

Kurkure's identity as a brand has always been rooted in this accessibility — the understanding that snacking is a universal pleasure, that the joy of something chatpata should not be gated by income. The LTO campaign honoured that identity. The film was big, funny, and celebrity-led. The product was within everyone's reach.

The lesson: the most complete campaigns close the loop between aspiration and action. They create desire through storytelling and then ensure that the path from desire to purchase has no unnecessary friction. Accessibility is not a compromise on brand values. For the right brands, it is the brand value itself.

When Flavour Becomes the Story

There is a version of this campaign that could have been far simpler. A plate of chaat. A close-up of spices. A spokesperson listing the ingredients of Out of Control Chaat and Uncensored Tadka with appropriate enthusiasm. A tagline. Cut.

Kurkure and Wunderman Thompson chose not to make that version.

Instead, they chose an anniversary dinner, a diamond necklace, a man hopelessly distracted by a packet of chips, and the word chatpati deployed as a marriage-threatening compliment. They chose Akshay Kumar's face — a face that India has trusted for decades to tell it exactly this kind of story. And they chose to price the whole thing at INR 5, so that the laughter the film generated could be immediately, physically completed with a purchase.

That is the full circuit of great FMCG advertising: the story creates the feeling, and the product delivers on it. In sixty seconds, Kurkure's LTO campaign completed that circuit with characteristic irreverence, warmth, and the kind of madness that has always made this brand impossible to ignore.