Followers + Community: Why brands are betting big on independent artists

For years, celebrity endorsements in India followed a familiar formula. Sign the biggest star you could afford, hand them the product, roll the cameras, and let the reach do the heavy lifting. That formula isn't exactly dead, but it's definitely losing the plot. Brands are increasingly teaming up with independent musicians, poets and sound artists whose follower counts may be smaller, but whose communities are far more invested.

The trust deficit that started this
Chetan Siyal, CMO at SNITCH, framed the shift in terms of what independent artists actually have that celebrities and mass-follower influencers don't. As he puts it, independent artists don't just have followers, they have communities, and people connect with them because of what they stand for, not just because they're famous. That distinction, followers versus community, is doing a lot of work in how brands now plan their marketing.

Siyal is blunt about what actually gets a partnership greenlit at SNITCH. “Authenticity is always the first filter, and if the partnership doesn't feel believable, no amount of media spend can make it work. Cultural influence, creative compatibility and credibility matter far more than follower count alone, because reach can be bought but authenticity can't.”

That shift also changes how success gets measured. Instead of stopping at views and engagement, SNITCH tracks impact across the entire funnel: website traffic, branded search, product discovery, conversion, customer acquisition and ultimately revenue, alongside the quality of engagement and the conversations a campaign generates. Siyal added that some of the strongest indicators emerge well after a campaign ends, when consumers continue discussing it organically or begin associating the brand with a larger cultural moment.

Why this surge
The rise of artist-led marketing isn't being driven by a single trend. It's the result of three shifts coming together at once.

For one, the way India consumes music has fundamentally changed. As Mitchelle Rozario Jansen, Senior Vice President, Business Strategy & Growth, White Rivers Media, pointed out, audiences are no longer discovering music only through films. Independent artists have built loyal communities of their own, making them far more than campaign faces. They have become long-term cultural partners for brands looking to stay relevant.

At the same time, consumers have become far more sceptical of conventional advertising. "Influencer recommendations are now taken with a pinch of salt, much like paid advertising," said Himanshu Chowdhry, Founder of Spectal. Artists, on the other hand, still enjoy a degree of rarity and credibility because they haven't saturated every category or platform. That exclusivity translates into trust.

The third shift is experiential. Gupta believes India has always had the foundation for it. "From the Kumbh Mela onwards, we've always understood the power of shared experiences," he said, adding that brands today are simply tapping into that instinct by creating large-scale music-led experiences with confidence that audiences will show up.

For brands, however, the value extends well beyond reach. "Brands want cultural relevance and a place within communities that consumers genuinely care about," said Jansen. That is why many are moving beyond one-off endorsements to build long-term music platforms. While audience overlap and social reach remain important filters, she argued the real test is whether an artist authentically fits the brand's values, story and community. Follower counts may open the door, but cultural alignment is what sustains the relationship.

That long-term view may be the biggest shift of all. Chowdhry pointed to Bacardi's decade-long association with NH7 as proof that cultural equity isn't built in a quarter. It takes years of consistent investment before audiences begin to associate a brand with a cultural movement.

Sharing insights on the artist-management side, Chowdhry says: “This isn't really new marketing logic, just applied to a new kind of asset.”

He argued that artists like Rishab Rikhiram Sharma, Chaar Diwaari and Bismil have built sharply defined identities, making them valuable to brands seeking cultural relevance rather than manufactured relevance. In an age of AI-generated content flooding every feed, he said, a genuinely distinct identity is what makes an artist worth partnering with.

Case One: Skoda and the sitar
If you want a textbook example of niche-to-niche brand matching, look at Skoda Auto India's ongoing collaboration with sitar virtuoso Rishab Rikhiram Sharma, the last disciple of Pandit Ravi Shankar, and an artist who has rebuilt the sitar's image around mental wellness and contemporary performance rather than pure classical tradition.

The partnership began with a film around the Octavia RS, where Sharma reimagined a track from his project Navaras to match the car's launch on a racing track. It worked well enough that Skoda returned to the same partnership for the Kodiaq RS, this time with a film titled Surrender, pairing the SUV's all-terrain performance with Sharma's composition Burning Ghat, played on his custom electric sitar, Sitara. Skoda's leadership described the sequel campaign as positioning the artist as curator rather than contributor, with the car built around the music instead of the other way around.

The collaboration worked because the fit felt natural. Sharma speaks to a premium audience interested in heritage and contemporary culture, while Skoda is trying to communicate precision, heritage and performance.

Case Two: The festival as owned territory
The second, arguably bigger shift is brands moving from sponsoring festivals to building cultural experiences around music, treating festivals less as ad inventory and more as long-term brand platforms.

Budweiser's BudX platform is one of the clearest examples in India. Over roughly a decade, the brand has built curated stages and takeovers at Lollapalooza India, Magnetic Fields, Echoes of Earth, DGTL and, more recently, an NBA-branded house event in Delhi. Rather than simply placing its logo at festivals, BudX has consistently shaped line-ups and experiences, building a recognisable identity within the live music circuit.

Aviral Gupta, CEO of Zostel and Zo World, is pursuing a similar strategy through travel experiences. “Zostel's association with the Ziro Festival of Music is not a media buy at all, it's an extension of the company's core product.”

"We don't spend on creators. We spend on building experiences. In this case, we're investing in creating an entire campsite and giving people a taste of what a camping festival should feel like and that's why we are part of the Ziro Festival of Music."

Gupta said a typical Zo Trip has around 15 travellers, whereas the company's Ziro Festival experience brings together nearly 500 people in batches of 30 to 40, effectively scaling its community-led travel model. While he expects a direct return of around 25 to 30 percent from the festival itself, he views it as part of a broader experiential strategy that also extends to Cherry Blossom Festival, Majuli, Pondville and Tomorrowland.

Together, the BudX and Zostel examples suggest that festivals are increasingly becoming long-term brand-building platforms rather than one-off sponsorship opportunities.

Case Three: Co-creation over endorsement
Not every version of this trend needs a festival stage. Sujata Biswas, Co-Founder of Suta, offered a smaller but sharper example of the same underlying logic by going deeper into an artist's work rather than simply attaching a name to a product. When Suta partnered with poet Priya Malik for a collection built around love, it didn't just have her wear the sarees. Her poetry became part of the collection itself.

The KPIs are still commercial, revenue, units sold and collection performance, but Biswas believes there are outcomes that numbers don't fully capture, particularly the exchange of audiences that happens when a poet's community discovers a saree brand through work they already trust, and vice versa.