Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt for Lay’s: Youth-Centric Marketing Done Right

Discover how Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt brought a fresh, youthful vibe to Lays through smart, high-impact marketing. See how their personalities, humor, and mass appeal helped the brand connect instantly with Gen Z and millennials. Understand why this collaboration became a standout example of youth-centric advertising done right.

Lay’s collaboration with Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt marked a clear shift in how the brand wanted to speak to India’s young snackers. The brand was moving away from straightforward “great taste” messaging and towards a more emotionally vibrant, youth-coded world built around mood, personality, and modern pop-culture behaviour. Ranbir and Alia, two of India’s most charismatic, playful, and instantly relatable stars, became the perfect duo to anchor this refreshed identity.

Instead of focusing on just flavour, Lay’s used them to spotlight moments of joy, banter, and everyday fun, the kind of spontaneous interactions that define Gen Z and millennial behaviour. Both actors brought warmth, humour, and effortless charm to Lay’s storytelling, helping the brand create snackable, shareable, and culturally relevant campaigns at exactly the right time.

Why Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt Were the Perfect Choice for Lay’s

1. Their Playful On-Screen Chemistry Matches Lay’s Fun-First Identity

Ranbir and Alia share a naturally mischievous energy, teasing, joking, and reacting to each other in a way that feels unscripted. Lay’s campaigns rely on playful, light-hearted storytelling, and the duo’s chemistry amplified that tone beautifully. Whether they’re stealing chips from each other or play-acting in everyday scenarios, their presence automatically makes the brand feel youthful and fun.

2. Both Stars Influence the Core TG Lay’s Sells To

Lay’s strongest consumer base is urban and semi-urban youth college goers, first-jobbers, and young adults who bond over movies, memes, moments, and moods. Ranbir brings mass class appeal, while Alia connects deeply with young, social-media-active audiences. Together, they cover the complete youth spectrum in a way few celebrity pairings can.

3. Their Personal Brand Values Align With the Campaign Spirit

Alia’s persona is quirky, relatable, and expressive. Ranbir’s charm is effortless, cool, and slightly mischievous. For Lay’s, which wanted to move beyond just “taste” and position itself as a mood-setter, something you reach for when you want to lighten up or add fun to your day, both actors naturally embodied that vibe.

4. They Helped Lay’s Break Out of Formulaic Snack Advertising

Most chips commercials traditionally rely on flavour shots, crunch close-ups, and generic “share the fun” messaging. With Ranbir and Alia, Lay’s began telling small, emotionally resonant stories, mini-scenes that felt like they were pulled straight from modern friendships, relationships, and youth culture. That narrative shift made Lay’s feel fresher and more relevant.

Iconic Lay’s Campaigns With Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt

1. Smile Deke Dekho: Bringing Smiles (and Chips) to Everyday Moments

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In 2019, Lay’s India launched the Smile Deke Dekho campaign, casting the pair Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt as its faces. The flagship TVC shows them sharing a train ride, a simple, everyday situation where the “Smile Pack” of Lay’s becomes a tool for connection. When Alia asks Ranbir to “share,” he initially misinterprets, only to realize she means the seat, not the chips. A playful twist that ends with the iconic tagline “Smile Deke Dekho.” This ad repositioned Lay’s from just a snack to a catalyst for human connection. As brand leadership explained, “like a smile, a pack of Lay’s can build connections between people.”

2. Social Media Amplification: #SmileDekeDekho Challenge

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To deepen engagement with younger, digital-native audiences, Lay’s extended the campaign online via the #SmileDekeDekho Duet Challenge on TikTok. In the challenge videos, Ranbir and Alia themselves share a series of animated, expressive “smiles” with Lay’s Smile packs, prompting fans to replicate and share their own smiles. The result: massive momentum online, millions of views, and thousands of user-generated posts. This digital-first drive helped cement Lay’s new youthful, fun identity not just as a snack, but as a social moment.

3. Launching Limited-Edition Flavours With a Story: #YeWaalaYaadRahega

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In early 2021, Lay’s unveiled two limited-time variants, Lay's Herby Crush and Lay's Cheesy Love, just ahead of Valentine’s Day, using Ranbir and Alia to give the launch emotional resonance. The campaign film shows them in light-hearted romantic banter, tying these flavours to youth, fun, and intimate bonds. This move showed Lay’s evolving beyond “just chips” using strong storytelling and Bollywood star appeal to frame even snack launches as culturally meaningful moments.

4. Behind-the-Scenes & BTS Content: Giving Lay’s a Real, Youth-Culture Soul

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One of the aspects that made Lay’s “Smile Deke Dekho” campaign stand out was the release of behind-the-scenes (BTS) and “making-of” videos featuring Ranbir and Alia, turning the ads from polished promos into relatable, human moments. For example, the video titled “Ranbir Kapoor & Alia Bhatt Making Of Lay’s Ad” shows the duo on set, with glimpses of the production crew, bloopers, setup shots and candid moments that happened off-camera.

What These Campaigns Did Right: Concrete Impact

• They used everyday contexts (train rides, friendly banter, youth-driven celebrations) rather than exaggerated glamour, making Lay’s feel like a part of real, relatable life.
  
  
• By combining star power, storytelling and social media interactivity, Lay’s created a multi-touchpoint identity memorable on TV, shareable online, and emotionally resonant to the target youth demographic.
  
  
• The campaigns didn’t just push flavour or taste: they positioned Lay’s as a social connector, a mood enhancer, and a cultural moment, shifting the brand from commodity to lifestyle.

How Celebrity Collaborations Help Snack Brands

Snack brands, unlike luxury or skincare, aren’t about aspiration; they’re about immediacy, impulse, and mood. The right celebrity injects personality and energy into that moment. Ranbir and Alia helped Lay’s:

• Tap directly into India’s youth culture, where fun, memes, moods, and micro-moments drive purchasing behaviour.
• Create emotional relevance, turning chips into a part of hanging out, flirting, celebrating, and joking around.
• Strengthen visual recall, since their faces and chemistry instantly anchor the brand in memory.
• Break category clutter, where products often look the same, but storytelling makes the real difference.

When snack brands pick celebrities who naturally reflect joy, spontaneity, and youth-coded behaviour, the endorsement stops feeling like an ad and starts feeling like culture.

Just Like Lay’s, Get a Famous Celebrity to Promote Your Snack Brand!

Lay’s partnership with Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt shows how the right celebrity pairing can completely reshape a brand’s personality from predictable flavour-driven ads to high-energy, culturally rooted storytelling that young consumers genuinely engage with.

If you want to build something similar for your own snack or FMCG brand, choosing the right face is crucial. With platforms like Tring, you can connect with leading Bollywood actors, rising Gen Z stars, or regional youth icons who naturally fit your brand’s tone and audience. Whether you're launching a new flavour, creating a youth-focused digital push, or building a nationwide campaign, the right celebrity can help your brand achieve far stronger recall, relatability, and real consumer impact.