Why big brands are betting on regional faces to drive festive sales

India’s festive calendar has never been a single story. It is a collection of celebrations, languages, rituals, foods and cultural cues that change every few hundred kilometres. And increasingly, brands are recognising that their festive marketing cannot be one-size-fits-all either.

This year, that shift is showing up in an interesting place: the face of the campaign.

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L’Oréal Paris has launched an India-first festive edition of its Casting Crème Gloss hair colour, with three new shades — Filter Kaapi Brown, Chai Latte Brown and Spiced Cinnamon Brown. More significantly, the brand has put regional Indian personalities on the packs for the first time. Sai Godbole from Maharashtra fronts Spiced Cinnamon Brown, West Bengal’s Preeti Sarkar represents Chai Latte Brown, while Tamil Nadu actor and model Vinusha Devi is the face of Filter Kaapi Brown.

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The move is more than a packaging innovation. It reflects a larger change in how global and national brands are approaching India: local relevance is increasingly becoming part of the product story, rather than just the communication strategy.

According to a 2026 Google-Deloitte report, creators are expected to influence 30% of India’s total retail spend by 2030, while one in 10 online purchases is projected to be directly attributable to a creator storefront. The report also points to the role creators will play in Tier 2+ markets, where they are expected to help bring 60 million first-time buyers online.

Meta’s latest India research makes the commerce argument even sharper. A Meta-Retailers Association of India study says social media now influences 77% of retail purchase decisions, while Meta platforms account for 96% of social discovery. Meta also notes that micro- and nano-creators are increasingly helping brands move consumers from consideration to intent and conversion.

Read On: Festive creator marketing moves beyond Diwali as brands chase regional relevance

When the face becomes part of the product

L’Oréal Paris’ festive Casting Crème Gloss launch is an interesting example of how regionalisation is moving beyond language.

The brand could have simply created an India-specific festive campaign. Instead, it has embedded Indian cultural references into the product itself — from shade names inspired by filter coffee, chai and cinnamon to the regional personalities featured on the packs.

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The result is a product designed to feel less like a global beauty product being marketed in India and more like a global beauty product that has been interpreted through India.

That distinction is becoming increasingly important as brands compete for attention in crowded categories.

For a beauty consumer in Tamil Nadu, for instance, “Filter Kaapi Brown” carries an immediate cultural association. Similarly, Chai Latte Brown and Spiced Cinnamon Brown are not just colour descriptions; they are familiar sensory references that can make the product easier to understand and remember.

And then comes the face.

By putting Vinusha Devi, Preeti Sarkar and Sai Godbole on the packaging, L’Oréal Paris is effectively taking the idea of regional influence from social feeds into the physical product aisle.

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From celebrity endorsement to cultural familiarity

The regional creator is no longer necessarily being brought in only because they can deliver millions of views.

The value lies increasingly in their ability to make a brand feel like it belongs in a particular community.

That is visible in Indriya’s festive strategy as well. The Aditya Birla Jewellery brand has appointed actor Krithi Shetty as its brand ambassador for the Southern markets and has placed her at the centre of its Varalakshmi campaign.

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The choice is particularly relevant because the campaign is rooted in a festival with strong cultural significance across the South. Rather than treating Varalakshmi as simply another festive marketing moment, Indriya has built its narrative around family, devotion, gifting and jewellery — themes that are deeply embedded in the occasion.

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As Shantiswarup Panda, Head of Marketing & Visual Merchandising, Indriya, puts it, “Varalakshmi marks the beginning of one of the most culturally significant periods for us across the Southern markets where jewellery is deeply intertwined with celebrations, family traditions and expressions of faith.”

He added that the brand wanted the campaign to reflect that authenticity “rather than simply celebrate the occasion”, with Krithi helping Indriya deepen its connection with Southern audiences in a culturally rooted yet contemporary manner.

That is perhaps the larger lesson for brands: regional marketing is moving from translation to interpretation.

It is no longer enough to take a national campaign and translate the copy into Tamil, Telugu, Bengali or Marathi. Brands increasingly need people who understand the cultural context behind those languages and communities.

For Indriya, Krithi Shetty brings a combination of celebrity recognition and regional familiarity.

For L’Oréal Paris, the approach is even more granular. Instead of one national face, the brand has created a collection of regional associations around individual products.

This is significant because the creator economy itself is becoming more geographically distributed.

A 2026 structural analysis of India’s creator economy by ISB’s SRITNE and HashFame found that Hindi accounts for 42% of India’s creator base, while regional languages collectively account for 58%. The report also notes that language often acts as a marker of shared cultural references, local knowledge and community identity — attributes that can reduce the social distance between creators and audiences.

The geographical spread is also visible in the creator ecosystem. Recent data cited from the same study shows that two-thirds of India’s creators now come from non-metros, while creators across Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Malayalam, Gujarati, Bhojpuri and other regional languages collectively outnumber Hindi creators.

For marketers, this changes the question from “Who has the biggest following?” to “Who has the strongest influence in the market we want to win?”

Read On: Onam 2026: Media agencies reveal the FOMO fuelling Kerala’s festive ad boom

The Licious play: Creators beyond the campaign

The same thinking is emerging in categories where the end goal is not simply festive awareness but repeat purchase.

Licious, which built its business as a D2C meat and seafood brand, has increasingly focused on building direct consumer relationships through its app, loyalty ecosystem and other owned channels. Its creator strategy works alongside these touchpoints, using regionally relevant content around recipes, food inspiration and local-language storytelling.

This is an important evolution.

The creator is no longer necessarily the destination of the campaign. Instead, the creator can become the bridge that moves consumers into a brand’s own ecosystem — whether that is an app, loyalty programme, WhatsApp community or repeat-purchase journey.

For a food brand, a regional creator demonstrating a familiar recipe can make the product relevant in a way a polished national advertisement may not. And once that consumer enters the brand ecosystem, the relationship can continue beyond the campaign.

That is where creator marketing starts looking less like advertising and more like customer acquisition.

From impressions to intent

The growing importance of regional creators also needs to be understood against the broader shift in how Indians discover products.

Meta’s 2026 research says Reels delivers 81% stronger product discovery and has a 47% influence on purchase decisions compared with other surveyed short-form video platforms and TV. The study also found that daily video engagement is no longer confined to metros, with 98% urban and 94% rural daily engagement on Meta platforms.

For brands, this makes regional creators particularly valuable. They can sit inside a national platform while speaking to audiences through local cultural codes.

And that distinction can matter at the point of purchase.

Read On: Why India’s Rs 900-crore festive creator market is moving beyond discovery

A national celebrity may create aspiration. A regional creator can create recognition.

The former can make a consumer say, “I want that.” The latter can make them think, “That is for people like me.”

That difference is becoming increasingly valuable in categories such as beauty, fashion, jewellery, food and personal care, where purchase decisions are often shaped by demonstration, familiarity and social validation.

Festive India is not one market

The festive season provides perhaps the clearest test of this strategy.

Onam is not Diwali. Varalakshmi is not Durga Puja. Pongal is not Ganesh Chaturthi. Even when the commercial objective is similar — drive consideration and sales — the emotional vocabulary changes from market to market.

That is why brands are increasingly building campaigns around cultural moments rather than simply putting a festive filter over a national campaign.

Indriya’s Varalakshmi campaign uses jewellery, family and devotion to build its narrative. L’Oréal Paris uses familiar Indian flavours and regional faces to make hair colour feel culturally relevant. Licious uses local food habits and creators to deepen the relationship beyond the transaction.

Different categories, different executions — but the same underlying strategy.

Get closer to the consumer by getting closer to their culture.

Fortune Kachi Ghani Mustard Oil’s latest Ilish campaign offers another perspective on the regionalisation of brand marketing — one where the culture itself becomes the campaign’s biggest face. Rather than relying solely on a celebrity endorsement, Fortune has taken its Ilish proposition directly to the places where Bengal’s love for fish comes alive. The ‘Heaviest Ilish Challenge’ was rolled out across 11 fish markets, with consumers invited to weigh their catch and win prize money and a year’s supply of Fortune oil, while those buying Ilish weighing over 1 kg could participate in a spin-the-wheel activity. The campaign also taps into the breadth of Bengali fish culture, inviting consumers to vote for favourites such as Bhapa Ilish, Sorshe Ilish, Tel Jhol, Paturi and Machher Tok. 

Beyond the markets, Fortune has branded 50 fish markets, deployed 23 full bus wraps and two taxis, including visibility across key consumer routes, taken the campaign to smaller towns through Canter Van activations, and added 22 regular hoardings and an innovative hoarding across the city. Digital content featuring Abir Chatterjee with Chef Atanu’s Rannaghar further extends the conversation, while TV and print provide traditional-media reinforcement.

The strategy illustrates how regional marketing does not always have to begin with finding the right influencer. Sometimes, finding the right cultural insight is enough. For Fortune, Ilish is the entry point — but the campaign builds around the entire ritual of buying, cooking and eating fish in Bengal. That makes the brand present not just on a screen, but at the fish market, on the bus route, in neighbourhoods and eventually on the dining table. It is a more immersive form of regional marketing, where consumer participation, outdoor visibility, point-of-purchase presence and culturally familiar food formats work together to create relevance. Fortune has also previously invested in regionalising its portfolio, including launching premium regional non-basmati rice variants in West Bengal.

The commercial opportunity is significant. Google and Deloitte expect creators to influence nearly a third of retail spending in India by 2030, while Meta’s research already points to social platforms becoming powerful drivers of discovery and purchase.

The next phase of influencer marketing, therefore, may not be about finding one creator who can speak to everyone. It could be about finding the right creator who can make a brand feel native to each audience it wants to sell to.

For marketers, that means the creator brief is changing too. Reach will still matter. But increasingly, relevance may be the metric that gets consumers all the way from scroll to sale.