Brand Ambassador of Lays

Lay’s — the world’s best-selling potato chip brand, created by Herman Lay in Nashville, Tennessee in 1932 and now the flagship snack under PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division — operates in India as one of the country’s most consumed and culturally embedded snack brands, present in the market for over three decades through PepsiCo India’s extensive manufacturing partnership with more than 27,000 Indian potato farmers. Lay’s India brand ambassador strategy has evolved across decades from mass Bollywood celebrity associations through cricket’s biggest stars to a current model that pairs different ambassador identities with different product tiers — Ranbir Kapoor as the brand’s primary India ambassador for the mainstream range and the brand’s most significant current campaign, Saif Ali Khan as the ambassador for Lay’s Gourmet premium kettle chips, and globally, football icons including Lionel Messi as the faces of the No Lay’s No Game international campaign.

Lay’s India Brand Ambassador Portfolio — Complete History

Ranbir Kapoor — The Global Brand Refresh Ambassador

Lay’s most significant India marketing event in 2026 arrived on February 16 — the announcement of the brand’s largest global brand refresh in its nearly 100-year history, brought to India through the Lay’s Ke Liye Kuchh Bhi campaign featuring brand ambassador Ranbir Kapoor. This was not merely a packaging or visual update — it represented PepsiCo’s most comprehensive rethinking of the Lay’s brand philosophy since the brand entered India, rooted in a sharper articulation of the brand’s agricultural heritage and ingredient quality story.

Saakshi Verma Menon, Chief Marketing Officer for Foods at PepsiCo India, captured the refresh’s depth with precision — noting that for nearly a century, Lay’s has believed that extraordinary taste begins at the farm, and that the new farm-to-bag design makes visible what has always been part of the brand’s story: chips made from the finest potatoes through enduring partnerships with over 27,000 Indian potato farmers.

Aastha Bhasin, Marketing Director for the Potato Chips Category at PepsiCo India, articulated why Ranbir Kapoor leads this campaign — explaining that through Lay’s Ke Liye Kuchh Bhi, the brand is celebrating the emotional connection consumers have with Lay’s, and that Kapoor brings a playful story to life that reaffirms the unmistakable love of Lay’s. The campaign’s central concept — Good Selfish, celebrating the playful things people do to secure their Lay’s chips before anyone else can, from holding onto the last chip to picking your flavour without negotiation — captures perfectly the irrational, delighted devotion that Lay’s fans feel for the brand.

Ranbir Kapoor’s selection as Lay’s primary India ambassador reflects precise demographic thinking. His combination of genuine youth appeal with cross-generational recognisability — he is beloved both by the 18-30 snacking-occasion demographic that drives Lay’s most frequent consumption and by the broader family audience that makes shared bag snacking a household ritual — gives Lay’s communication the widest possible demographic coverage in a single ambassador relationship.

Saif Ali Khan — The Gourmet Ambassador

Lay’s Gourmet’s appointment of Saif Ali Khan as the premium range’s first-ever dedicated brand ambassador demonstrated sophisticated product portfolio thinking — recognising that premium kettle chips require a premium celebrity identity rather than the warm mass-appeal personality that works for the mainstream Lay’s range. Saif Ali Khan — the Nawab of Bollywood, as both fans and the Lay’s Gourmet campaign itself characterise him — carries authentic associations with fine taste, inherited elegance, and the appreciation of quality over mere quantity that the Lay’s Gourmet positioning of slow-cooked, carefully crafted chips from selected potatoes requires.

Shailja Joshi, Director of Marketing for the Potato Chips Category at PepsiCo India, articulated this ambassador selection logic with the phrase that defines it — noting that Saif’s impeccable taste and refined choices in life make him the perfect partner to showcase the crafted experience of Lay’s Gourmet, and that their TV commercial gives a sneak peek into what actually defines Saif as the connoisseur of finer things. The campaign narrative — journalists arriving to interview Saif and imagining a grand luxurious lifestyle, only for him to surprise them with Lay’s Gourmet as his definition of exquisite taste — creates exactly the gentle comedy of brand elevation that premium snacking requires.

The Global Football Campaign — No Lay’s No Game

Lay’s 2025 global campaign — No Lay’s No Game, specifically the Lay’s Crawl variant featuring Messi, Thierry Henry, Luis Suárez, and Alexia Putellas — continues the brand’s long-standing association with football as the universal language of passionate, joyful consumption that mirrors the experience of passionate Lay’s snacking.

Lay’s ambassador strategy across its product portfolio demonstrates a brand mature enough to deploy different celebrity identities for genuinely different product personalities — from Ranbir’s playful Good Selfish energy for the accessible mainstream range, through Saif’s refined nawabi taste for the Gourmet tier, to football’s greatest names for the global game-day consumption occasion that spans every country where football matters.