Pierce Brosnan, who played James Bond between 1994 and 2005, on set for the Pan Bahar ad in Austin, Texas. Pics/Andrew Eccles

It may be outlandish, but the Pierce Brosnan paan masala ad (for Pan Bahar) was borne out of some deep calculation. The team's mission was to make pan masala seem classy and take it a notch above where the previous brand ambassador, Saif Ali Khan, left it.

So, Agent 007 took over from Agent Vinod, it seems. But, what the nation wants to know, is that how did they go from Bollywood to Hollywood, with a product that the Wall Street Journal describes as 'a concoction of areca nut, a stimulant, and spices often chewed along with tobacco or betel leaf by millions in South Asians'?

More than Brosnan, it was James Bond that the makers wanted to bring to the brand. Says Sambit Mohanty, creative head of DDB Mudra North, the agency that created the commercial that raked up a storm on social media last week, "Nobody said you cannot use an international icon to sell paan masala. The rulebook went out of the window and only after that, did we begin brainstorming." Mohanty says the idea was to look beyond 'the Kumars and the Kapoors'.