Festive season spots: Durga Puja, Navratri campaigns look at building emotional connect

With the festive season underway, several brands have launched campaigns around Durga Puja and Navratri, using cultural touchpoints to connect with audiences. From boAt’s collaboration with Falguni Pathak to V-Guard’s message about safety, the ads reflect a broader trend: moving beyond product promotion to position brands within rituals, emotions, and community life.

We look at campaigns that blended timeless rituals with modern anxieties, from garba legends to reliable snacks.

boAt – Upgrade to boAt (ft. Falguni Pathak)

The 47-second ad film marries festival nostalgia with creator-driven irreverence. The film leans hard into Navratri’s energetic soundtrack culture by casting Falguni Pathak (a literal icon when it comes to Garba songs). The juxtaposition does two smart things: it roots boAt in ritual and rhythm, while positioning the brand as the youthful next-generation audio choice. The creative uses a light comic tone so the product never overwhelms the ritual. Strategically, the campaign taps a behavioural truth: festival playlists and audio experiences matter more during Navratri than almost any other time of the year.

BGMI –  Opekkha: The Wait Is Worth It

The montage of an ad film trades spectacle for sentiment. Where many gaming spots default to action beats, this film chooses a patient, human story as its emotional core. Instead of in-game fireworks, the ad foregrounds everyday rituals, showing how anticipation and community patience translate into a richer payoff: shared play. That’s a savvy move in 2025: after years of flashy gaming creatives, BGMI reframes the product as an emotional social glue that rewards waiting and re-engagement. Given the brand’s broader 2024–25 creative posture of tying gaming to nostalgia and shared competitive memories, ‘Opekkha’ feels like a continuation, as it reframes the game not just as entertainment, but as an occasion people anticipate together. There’s less emphasis on hard product specs and more on cultural resonance, a useful tactic for building long-term engagement in regional markets.

Flipkart Minutes – Make Pujo perfect in 10 minutes!

Flipkart Minutes’ festive execution leans into an attention-grabbing functional promise: ultra-fast fulfilment. The spot dramatizes small ordinariness (forgotten sindoor, last-minute sweets, a missing accessory) and resolves it through Flipkart Minutes’ speed. Strategically, Flipkart isn’t merely selling a transaction; it’s selling reliability during culturally high-stakes hours. That position resonates during Durga Puja when shoppers oscillate between pandal-hopping and urgent purchases: speed becomes a cultural convenience, not just a tech boast.

Parle G – Sharodiya Shubhechha

Parle G’s Durga Puja spot leans into cultural guardianship and emotional proximity. The ad frames the biscuit as a quiet witness to Kolkata’s Pujo: a ubiquitous snack threaded through rituals, creative practice, and neighborhood camaraderie. The creative circumnavigates an artisan / maatir-manush archetype, celebrating craft and local culture while positioning Parle-G as an elemental part of those moments. The biscuit moulds itself into the always-there snack behind the artist’s long hours and the community’s shared tea breaks. This approach is subtle but effective: rather than shout product benefits, Parle G stakes a cultural claim with a lightweight, affordable symbol of continuity and belonging during a festival rooted in tradition and local identity. In an advertising season crowded with cinematic jewelry films and emotional family pieces, Parle G’s grounded, place-based storytelling feels like a strategic reminder that certain brands succeed by being the familiar backdrop to people’s rituals.

Casio Watches – Durga Puja 2025

Casio’s Pujo film turns a watch into a humane object, not merely a timepiece but a symbol of ‘time given’ and familial connection. The ad’s narrative is quietly cinematic: a weary father, the ritual scheduling of Pujo, small domestic moments, and then a watch as a gift that becomes an emblem of shared time. Casio frames the product as an emotional reminder to slow down and be present, making a smart move during a festival that compresses family reunions and rituals into a small span of days. In marketing terms, it’s a category-appropriate emotional play: watches are naturally about time; Casio simply reframes those mechanics as family rituals and festival pauses.

V-Guard – This Durga Puja, Let’s Awaken Our Third Eye for Women’s Safety

V-Guard’s Durga Puja film is a purpose-first creative that challenges the viewer: celebrate the goddess of strength while reckoning with contemporary failures to protect women. ‘The Third Eye’ uses the festival’s spiritual symbolism to call for social introspection. This is an ambitious creative pivot for an electronics / appliances company, and it works because it matches the festival’s moral register. Rather than being a token PR gesture, the film attempts to make Pujo into a civic moment: devotion is not only bowing at the pandal but also ensuring safety in the public sphere. In the crowded Pujo advertising calendar, this ad stands out because it uses ritual to press for real-world accountability.

CaratLane – Mayer Aashirbad

CaratLane’s 3-minute-long reimagines Durga Puja as an intimate stage for personal milestones; specifically, the proposal. The film reframes the puja’s customary rituals as an emotional arc that culminates in a proposal, marrying public ritual with private romance. Directed and produced with cinematic and musical ambition, the spot uses lush cinematography and local sensibilities to position CaratLane’s rings as not just objects of ornamentation, but as artifacts that “seal” life’s big moments within the Pujo calendar. This is smart positioning for a jewelery brand: Pujo in Bengal is a peak jewellery-buying moment, and by associating proposals and romantic climax with CaratLane, the brand locks aspirational desire to cultural ritual.

Tanishq – For Srijonis of New Bangaliyana

Tanishq’s Durga Pujo film celebrates the evolving Bengali woman, the ‘Srijoni’ who works, creates, and also curates tradition on her own terms. Rather than depicting Pujo purely as a site of conventional ritual, the film foregrounds agency: women choosing how to express their cultural identity while continuing to participate in community rites. Tanishq blends cinematic prestige with progressive social messaging as the brand quietly reframes jewelry-buying as a celebratory affirmation of choice.