Indian advertising does tend to bring out the best in creativity, storytelling and emotional connection during the festive season. Creatively, the festive season offers a great opportunity to grab the consumers’ attention with good contextual storytelling by connecting a brand to one of the most integral parts of their lives – festivals. By incorporating cultural elements, traditional values, and relatable narratives, advertisements during the festive season resonate with consumers evoking a sense of nostalgia and belonging.
However, thanks to social media, consumers are bombarded with ads around Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Dussehra and Diwali leading up to Christmas and the New Year, which creates some fatigue in the minds of viewers.
To be of genuine impact for the brand, it’s important that businesses do not jump on the festive bandwagon due to FOMO but do so because they sincerely believe in the story that they want to tell the world. Once committed to it, they need to go all out in terms of the production and amplification of the idea. That will result in the best campaigns from a creative lens and will bring the desired results for the business.
Cadbury has managed to crack a great recipe and hit the sweet spot in their Diwali advertising. An insight about shopping from local stores, the use of technology, the one and only SRK, and yes, great media spends to boot – have resulted in producing one of the more memorable campaigns I’ve seen. While it began during the recovery from Covid in 2021, they have continued to build on that last year and this year too.
A memorable story, an impactful outcome. A cracker of a campaign I would say!
From a pure uniqueness standpoint, Netflix’s Cherrapunji ki Diwali campaign was lovely just for the way they brought a hitherto “unseen” side of Diwali for the rest of India to see.
They stayed true to the brand’s fun and quirky tone of voice but tempered it perfectly to match the emotion associated with the festival.
(Reporting by Riya Sethi.)
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