When brands force their way into festivals, where does relevance end?

If the Indian ad calendar had a lead character, it would be Diwali. With the festival landing on November 8 this year, nearly three weeks later than in 2025, brands have enjoyed a longer runway, and the festive playbook has turned up in full: films, hampers, limited-edition packs and enough diyas on screen to light up a small town.

The guest list is long and the mithai is limited, so creative leaders are asking a delightfully simple question: How does a brand get invited to the celebration and not merely turn up at the door?


Why everyone wants a seat at the mithai table

The enthusiasm has solid commercial logic. The Pitch Madison Advertising Report 2026 projects India's ad expenditure at ₹1,74,605 crore this year, up 12 to 13% from ₹1,55,105 crore in 2025, with digital's share climbing to 46% from 42%. Industry estimates place festive advertising alone at ₹60,000 to 62,000 crore, roughly 34 to 35% of the total adex.

When over a third of the year's money lands in one window, every category, from cars to cookware, has a reason to want a piece of the festive pie.

Nobody in the creative fraternity denies that the commercial pull is real. Prathap Suthan, CCO & Managing Partner, BangInTheMiddle, a Bengaluru-based creative agency, says Diwali is hard to argue with as a selling moment. “Diwali is a terrific time to sell almost anything. People buy cars and bikes, book flats, paint their homes and replace televisions that were working perfectly well in October,” he says.

Some categories have written the festive rulebook so well that their presence feels like part of the ritual itself, and gifting is the cleanest example. “Then there are the brands that have made a business of festive gifting,” Suthan notes. The reason it works is less the size of the ad budget and more the fit, a product that solves a real festive need wrapped in a story that makes it easier to carry, give and receive.


Reading the cultural grammar

Fit, as creative leaders describe it, is rarely accidental. It comes from reading what the festival actually runs on, whether that is the gold of Lakshmi Puja, the glow of the diya or sweets exchanged across doorsteps, and then finding an honest way in.

Karthik Srinivasan, self-employed Communications Consultant and former National Lead at Social@Ogilvy, notes that a gifting product can already be popular during Diwali “because of its ‘gold’ packing (that goes well with the Diwali ethos of Lakshmi Puja, Gold, wealth and sweet, etc.).” The smartest brands then layer in local touches, such as diya-inspired packs “to further enhance the local Diwali context.”

For him, the bigger signal is effort. Localisation tells audiences that a brand did its homework, and the real test is whether “some thought has gone into localizing the product.” His advice to marketers is refreshingly uncomplicated. Brands, he says, should “make an attempt at understanding what really goes during Diwali.”


Start with the human, not the product

Most of the debate eventually circles back to the brief. When the festival is treated as a slot to be filled, the brief asks how the product can be made relevant. When it is treated as an insight to be mined, the brief asks how the brand can add to the celebration.

Mayank Somani, AVP - Marketing, Rebel Foods, the cloud kitchen major, argues that the second question makes all the difference. “I believe brands sometimes make the mistake of asking, ‘How can we make our product relevant to Diwali?’ rather than ‘How can we genuinely add value to the way people celebrate the festival?’” he says.

That reframing opens doors for categories that do not sit at the centre of a ritual. Food, for instance, may not feature in every puja, but it is how families host, gather and bond, and that is the opening for a food brand. “For brands, the opportunity lies not necessarily in becoming part of a traditional ritual, but in finding a natural place in the moments that make the celebration meaningful,” Somani says.

It also helps to remember that Diwali is a very large festival with a very large shopping list, and almost every product has some role in it. “Diwali is life. People get headaches, brush their teeth and get bitten by mosquitoes. There’s a use for nearly everything we sell,” Suthan observes. The question then shifts from whether a product is useful to whether the idea around it is true.

The festive season forgives many styles, though. The familiar toolkit of diyas, lights and family reunions is easy to reach for, and Somani cautions that “cultural understanding goes beyond festive imagery.” Not every film needs to tug at the heartstrings either. “I also believe that not every festive campaign needs to be emotional or purpose-driven. Humour, convenience, indulgence or even a simple product-led idea can be equally relevant and authentic, as long as it is rooted in a genuine consumer insight,” he adds.

His own check is a neat reverse of the logo swap test. “Ultimately, the test is simple: If you take away the festive visuals and references, does the core idea still capture something meaningful about the occasion and consumer behaviour?”


When the festival leads the story

One route is to let the festival lead the story, and the brands that make it look easy tend to begin with the culture and not the catalogue. Cumin Co. is a Gurugram-based D2C kitchenware brand known for its enamel-coated cast iron cookware, founded in 2025 by Niharika Joshi and Udit Lekhi. Its first campaign, ‘Pratha’, launched in August around three ideas of faith, feast and festivities, an attempt to explore the larger cultural world the brand belongs to.

For the co-founders, joining a festival starts with a simple filter. “We don’t believe every brand needs to be present at every celebration, or that a festival should simply become another opportunity to push a product. It’s about identifying whether there is a genuine cultural and emotional connection between the occasion and what the brand stands for,” they say.

That filter shapes the creative too. Cookware lives in the kitchen, and the kitchen is where much of the festive action happens, so the brand's Diwali work looks to everyday stories and real celebrations for its cues. “For us, it has to feel native to who we are as a brand, not something we participate in just for the sake of being part of a cultural moment,” the founders explain.

The payoff is storytelling that works beyond the product itself, the point where a festive film stops looking like an ad and starts feeling like part of the season. “At Cumin Co., we want the festival to lead the story, with the brand finding its place organically within it,” they add.

Choosing the right festive conversation

Behind all these routes sits one common discipline, which is looking at what shoppers are actually doing before deciding what the brand should say.

Bharat Subramaniam, Founder & Managing Director, BigTrunk Communications, a Mumbai-based independent integrated digital agency, says that is where every festive brief should begin. “At BigTrunk, we believe the starting point should always be consumer behaviour rather than the marketing calendar. A brand needs to understand what people are actually doing, buying, sharing and experiencing during a festival before deciding how it can participate.”

Diwali also gives brands plenty to choose from, with gifting, home preparation, shopping and families coming together all competing for attention, and the trick lies in not chasing all of them. “Diwali naturally creates opportunities around gifting, home preparation, shopping and bringing families together. A brand does not necessarily need to belong to all these conversations. It needs to identify one where its offering can add genuine value. If the connection exists only because it is Diwali, audiences will see through it.”

Insight does not always arrive wearing a diya. Sometimes it is as plain as the shopping list. Subramaniam points to what he calls BigTrunk's award-winning Diwali campaign for retail chain SPAR, built around a ‘Festival of Savings’, which linked the occasion to how people shop, gift and prepare for celebrations.

In his view, what separates a good festive idea from a forgettable one is contribution. “The difference often comes down to whether the brand contributes something meaningful to the occasion or merely uses its imagery to attract attention. A creative integration works well when it is rooted in a genuine consumer insight and connects with what people actually value during the festival.”

The festive spike in spending gave that idea its footing, since a retail brand has a natural role when households are buying more than usual. “Rather than simply using Diwali as a backdrop, the campaign showed how SPAR could become part of consumers’ festive shopping decisions by offering value at a time when their purchasing needs were naturally higher,” Subramaniam explains.

Where relevance ends

So where does relevance end? Perhaps nowhere as dramatic as a line in the sand. It simply thins out the further a brand drifts from what the festival is really about, and audiences, who have seen a fair few festive films by now, are quick to feel it. The industry, to its credit, is already laughing at its own habits, usually the first step towards fixing them.

Suthan, for one, includes himself in the joke. “Somewhere along the way, we’ve decided that finding a use for a product entitles us to stuff it into the celebration. I’d put this in the brief. If your product has an honest part to play in somebody’s Diwali, write that ad.”

The reward for getting it right is memory. A festive idea that earns its place keeps working long after the diyas are packed away, and Subramaniam sums up the payoff in a line that could sit on any planning wall. “Put simply, a clever integration may win attention for a moment, but a well-judged one gives consumers a reason to remember the brand long after the festival is over.”

With over a third of the year's adex riding on the festive window, the temptation to chase every celebration will only grow, and Diwali will not be the last festival to feel the crowd. The brands that come out ahead will be those that treat the festive season less like a billboard and more like a dinner invitation: arrive with something the host actually needs, stay for the right amount of time and leave the table a little warmer than they found it.