MUMBAI: Some advertising ideas age like fine wine; Pulsar’s latest one has simply shifted gears. Bajaj Auto has launched a new television commercial for the all-new Pulsar 150, marking 25 years of the motorcycle and the advertising campaign that helped turn performance motorcycling into a mainstream aspiration in India.
Conceptualised by Ogilvy, the film serves as a sequel to Pulsar’s much-remembered 2001 launch campaign, revisiting characters and visual cues from the original while bringing the story into the present.
When Pulsar arrived in 2001, it sought to change more than just the motorcycle parked outside an Indian home. The brand positioned performance, attitude and excitement as part of the riding experience in a market largely built around everyday mobility. Its distinctive advertising and motorcycle design helped create a new space for performance-focused bikes and turned Pulsar into an icon of the segment.
The new TVC picks up that thread 25 years later. Two nurses once again encounter something familiar beneath a white sheet, triggering a sense of déjà vu and taking them back to their original encounter. The reveal then brings the story firmly into 2026 with the all-new Pulsar 150.
The sequel retains the tempo and energy of the original campaign, but uses familiarity as the hook before steering the audience towards the new motorcycle.
That evolution mirrors the brand’s journey. Pulsar has sold more than 20 million motorcycles globally and has grown from an Indian performance-bike proposition into a global performance motorcycle brand. Running through that journey is its “Definitely Daring” attitude, which Bajaj Auto says continues to define the brand.
Sumeet Narang, President, Marketing, Bajaj Auto, said Pulsar’s attitude has evolved with its riders, the category and the brand, while its essence remains “Definitely Daring”. He added that the new Pulsar 150 represents the next expression of that spirit.
For Ogilvy, the challenge was less about recreating a famous advertisement and more about making its familiarity work for a new generation. Sukesh Nayak, Group Chief Creative Officer, Ogilvy India, said the recognisable visual cues and rhythm were used to build anticipation before taking the story in a new direction.
A quarter of a century after the original Pulsar campaign helped redefine what a motorcycle could represent, Bajaj Auto is now betting that the old memory can give its newest 150cc offering a fresh push — proving that in advertising, sometimes the best way to move forward is to take a familiar road and put a new machine on it.
