Inside 2025’s Marketing Reset: What did India’s top FMCG players learn this year?

From geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainty to uneven consumption patterns, 2025 tested marketers in India across categories and geographies. Yet, against this volatile backdrop, India’s advertising market displayed notable resilience.

According to WPP’s This Year, Next Year (TYNY) report, India’s total advertising revenue is projected to touch Rs 1.85 lakh crore in 2025, marking a 9.2% year-on-year growth. The momentum underscores a market that has continued to invest, even as marketers recalibrated strategies around efficiency, accountability, and long-term brand value.

Read e4m report on AI shifting FMCG search economics

For FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) players, 2025 marked a decisive shift towards tighter scrutiny on efficiency, effectiveness and return on investment (ROI). With budgets under pressure and accountability rising, marketers moved away from vanity metrics to outcomes that could be directly linked to business impact, industry experts told e4m. 

This shift has played out alongside the rapid expansion of retail media networks. As retailers build in-house media capabilities, FMCG brands are consolidating media operations to drive performance and efficiency. 

How was Q2FY26 for FMCG

Encouragingly, the broader consumption environment began to turn positive in the second quarter ending September. After months of muted sentiment, India’s FMCG sector staged a meaningful recovery, led by a sharp rise in rural demand. Industry trackers attribute the upturn to better monsoons, easing inflation, improved reservoir levels, stronger credit availability and rising income indicators—factors that restored confidence across FMCG, auto and retail categories.

For the first time in several quarters, rural consumption decisively outpaced urban demand. According to Motilal Oswal Financial Services’ ECOSCOPE report, “Rural Rules, Urban Follows,” rural consumption grew 7.7% year-on-year in Q2—its strongest performance in 17 quarters—driven by higher farm and non-farm wages, robust farm credit, stronger tractor and fertiliser sales, and stable MSP procurement. Urban demand, by contrast, remained subdued through Q2, with early signs of recovery emerging only in Q3 as festive demand picked up.

Read e4m report on FMCG grappling with GST slabs

With Q3 and Q4 accounting for nearly 60% of India’s over ₹1 lakh crore advertising market, the recovery has renewed optimism among FMCG majors who are the country’s largest advertising spender, clocking an estimated ₹32,000 crore in 2024 and contributing nearly one-third of all digital ad revenues — around ₹15,000 crore.

Against this backdrop, e4m spoke with marketing leaders from India’s leading FMCG companies to understand what stood out in 2025—and how those learnings are shaping their advertising playbooks for 2026.

ROI considerations to sharpen further: Varun Sethuraman, Nestle

For Varun Sethuraman, Business Head – Breakfast Cereals at Nestlé South Asia, 2025 marked a structural shift in how brands tell stories. He notes that creators moved from the fringes to the centre of brand narratives, forcing marketers to rethink consistency in a fragmented media environment. Brand communication, he says, now needs to work seamlessly across screens and moments, placing a premium on coherence across all content touchpoints.

Looking ahead, Sethuraman expects ROI considerations to sharpen further as digital and social commerce investments rise. “ROI was and will remain critical, especially amid rising competition and increased digital spends. As social and social commerce accelerate, performance-led investments will increasingly dictate marketing choices. At the same time, the growing clutter across categories will push brands to sharpen their identity and creative ‘smashables’, while measuring impact more rigorously across key brand metrics,” says Sethuraman. 

A year of getting back to basics: Mayank Shah, Parle Products

The year 2025 was a year of getting back to basics. Brands moved away from chasing every new trend and refocused on clear messaging, consistency, and real consumer relevance. In a value-conscious market like India, trust and familiarity became even more important, especially amid price sensitivities driven by GST and input cost pressures, shares Mayank Shah, Vice President of Parle Products. 

Shah says, while premiumisation continued, largely led by urban consumers, the year reinforced that long-term brand building depends on staying grounded in what consumers genuinely need. In 2026, the advertising market will move towards a more balanced and mature approach. While performance marketing will continue to drive short-term outcomes, there will be a renewed emphasis on brand-building as a growth lever, especially in a price-sensitive and competitive market. 

Marketers will look at ROI more holistically, not just immediate conversions, but also long-term impact on awareness, trust, and preference. As categories navigate premiumisation at a measured pace and consumers remain value-conscious, brands that invest consistently across the funnel will be better placed to drive sustainable growth, he points out. 

Performance marketing clear accelerator: Rajiv Dubey, Dabur

Rajiv Dubey, Vice President at Dabur India, views 2025 as a year when macro variables align in marketers’ favour. Strong monsoons, improved GST efficiencies, low inflation, and robust GDP growth combined to make demand more predictable. Rural markets, in particular, staged a recovery, aided by better farm yields and increased liquidity, translating into higher consumption.

Dubey believes 2026 will mark an inflection point for data discipline. With the DPDP Act coming into force, brands will need to take data hygiene seriously. While brand building will continue to anchor marketing strategies, he sees performance marketing playing a clear accelerator role. With expectations of stronger GDP growth in the first half of 2026, advertising intensity, he adds, is likely to pick up momentum.

“For Dabur, 2026 will be driven by personalisation at scale and a resurgence of general trade, while riding the momentum in quick commerce and modern trade. Timeless brands like Dabur will continue to be built using modern tools.”

Balance between Brand building & performance marketing: Rajeev Jain, DS Group 

At DS Group, Senior Vice President – Corporate Marketing Rajeev Jain describes 2025 as a year of blending cultural resonance with digital agility. Festive spikes, rapid e-commerce and quick commerce adoption, and Gen Z’s growing influence helped drive robust online sales. Premiumisation trends, favourable monsoons, and tax reliefs further strengthened consumption, reinforcing the idea that today’s consumer is willing to pay for quality.

Jain highlights how culturally grounded yet digitally advanced initiatives—ranging from regional festive IPs to AI-led storytelling and influencer-led campaigns—helped deepen consumer engagement across markets. He also points to the launch of DCODE, a digital marketing playbook developed with WPP, as a milestone in standardising and strengthening digital practices across the organisation.

“Looking to 2026, we expect diversified, digital-first media mix with heightened ROI scrutiny. Investments in CTV, digital video, influencers, and paid social are likely to rise, even as traditional media continues to play a role. The focus will be on striking a better balance between brand building and performance marketing—supported by advanced analytics to maximise effectiveness,” Jain shares. 

Q-Commerce a big growth lever: Kaushik Vedula, Emami

For Kaushik Vedula, Vice President – Marketing, Consumer Care Business at Emami, 2025 fundamentally reshaped the marketing playbook. He observes that consumers rewarded honesty—be it transparent product claims or credible influencer marketing driven by creators with genuine community trust. At the same time, large celebrity ensembles delivered mass salience for consumer brands, even as rising Meta costs forced marketers to rethink efficiency and explore alternative brand-building routes.

Vedula also points to AI’s transition from experimentation to mainstream adoption as one of the year’s defining shifts, enabling smarter campaign execution and signalling what lies ahead.

In 2026, he expects a “back-to-basics” reset, where authenticity, clarity, and brand building drive sustainable growth. Digital, already surpassing television reach in key states such as Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, will continue to dominate the media mix. 

“We also see brands reinvesting in deeper consumer understanding, moving beyond functional need-states to capture cultural sentiment and the broader ‘mood of the nation.’ And as advertising solutions on quick commerce platforms mature, they will emerge as a powerful growth lever, adding a new dimension to the marketer’s toolkit,” Vedula noted. 

The Road Ahead

Taken together, marketers’ reflections from 2025 reveal a clear shift: away from volume-led digital spends towards smarter, tech-enabled, and insight-driven marketing. As 2026 approaches, the emphasis is firmly on building brands that are not only visible and performant but also credible, consistent, and culturally aligned in an increasingly complex media ecosystem.