Festive advertising is at a crossroads. Once built on emotional stories of culture and family, it now faces the pull of quick commerce, discounts, and conversion pressure. Given this scenario, we aimed to discover if brands should still invest in cultural relevance and brand love, or pivot to sales-driven narratives for instant results.

In our September issue, we spoke with Sai Karthik, strategy, Talented and Ramesh Narayan, founder, Canco Advertising, to understand their take on it. 

Do festive ads today exist to celebrate culture, or are they increasingly designed to sell products by tapping into urgency and FOMO?

Sai Karthik (SK): FOMO works when the novelty is real. Selling, on the other hand, demands consistency. FOMO is what made people queue outside Ikea in Hyderabad, H&M in Delhi, or the Apple Store in Mumbai. These were brand launches disguised as cultural events. Something new, hot, and scarce landed in your neighbourhood, and everyone wanted in. That’s when urgency sells because curiosity is doing the heavy lifting.

But festive advertising is routine. Every brand is live. Every platform is screaming. Every shopper is overwhelmed. You’re not competing for curiosity, you’re fighting for attention in a cluttered season. That’s where culture becomes your hack. It gives your brand a reason to be heard, not just seen.

Ramesh Narayan (RN): Festive ads are supposed to celebrate culture and simultaneously promote sales. But yes, more ads today concentrate on the latter, trying to capitalise on the mood of the customer.

Can heavy discount-driven messaging and emotional storytelling co-exist, or does one undermine the other?

SK: They aren’t separate concepts; I feel the lines are blurred more than one can imagine. I genuinely believe discounts are better delivered with storytelling. We have seen this firsthand across campaigns, especially during peak clutter seasons. Take MakeMyTrip’s IPL ‘Face-Off’ campaign, which was fundamentally about pushing discounted premium hotel bookings. We could have led with price tags, but instead, we created a disruptive storytelling hook: five internet-breaking celebrities, their faces masked, their identities hidden, building curiosity and anticipation for the offer. Suddenly, the discounts weren’t just deals, they were part of a larger, cultural reveal. And it worked. We saw a clear positive consideration bump and a stronger business impact for that quarter compared to the year before. Which told us something important: in an online business, discounting isn’t liquidation, it’s recruitment. And storytelling gives that recruitment momentum.

When discount-first advertising becomes a top-of-funnel play, storytelling stops being optional. In a bootstrapped, high-velocity ecosystem, brands don’t have the luxury of siloed tactics. Every piece of communication has to do more than one job.

RN: If there is an ad that stresses the emotional appeal and ends with a good discount, it makes the message complete. And memorable as well.

What do consumers actually carry forward post-festive season, according to results witnessed in the past, the cultural ‘feeling’ or the deal they got?

SK: The best kind of discount advertising is when consumers forget it’s about a discount and engage with the brand seamlessly, emotionally, and voluntarily. When a tactical incentive delivers disproportionate attention, affinity, and cultural relevance, that’s the real win. Internally, every festive campaign we make has that as the North Star.

RN: This depends on the message. If the ad conveyed the emotional appeal of the brand and coupled it with a sales pitch, the customer would walk away with a warm feeling about the brand, instead of forgetting it as a time-bound quickie.

Is festive brand equity built through lasting narratives (if yes, how is that measured?), or do sales spikes and conversions judge it?

SK: In today’s communication landscape, the definition of ‘spike’ has evolved. It’s no longer just about a sharp rise in sales; it’s about a brand spike: moments when the brand captures attention, enters cultural conversations, or disrupts.

That kind of spike is in PR cycles, shareability, and consumer anticipation. The real conversion today is when a consumer starts thinking: “What will this brand do this Diwali? Or Pongal? Or Raksha Bandhan?” That curiosity is currency well earned! And it’s a more sustainable form of brand building.

We’ve seen this play out in campaigns where consideration and awareness scores spike alongside sales. When all three move together, that’s when we know we’ve hit the sweet spot. Today, you can’t treat brand scores as a bonus anymore or write them off as ‘good to have’. In fact, for sales-driven campaigns, they should be considered the primary North Star alongside revenue. Because when you aim for brand and business, the quality and scale of ideas available to you multiply.

RN: Festive brand equity is an important bonus to a sales push. It cannot exist in isolation. After all, many brands generate the bulk of their sales during the festive season, so the campaign has to do its job of promoting sales. The HP Printer ad that showed a young boy printing out simple posters urging people to buy the diyas that a roadside seller had stocked is a classic example of a great narrative that keeps the brand name to the very end, yet makes a memorable impact.

Do influencers and on-ground activations offer the immediacy that today’s sales-driven festive season demands, or can they also play a role in building deeper cultural connections?

SK: There’s a pan-marketing problem at play: we treat influencers as cheaper distribution networks, not as brand representatives. We reduce them to follower counts, engagement rates, and CPMs, and when those numbers stabilise, influencer strategy becomes a matter of budget call. That’s a fundamental flaw. Because influencers can do something few other levers in the marketing mix can’t: drive action through advocacy.

When an influencer says, “I’ve tried this, it’s great, you should totally check it out”, it propels me to try something new even if it’s uncomfortable. The unfair use of influencer roles today is when they become a default and, worse, forgettable.

On-ground activations, on the other hand, offer a different kind of magic. They let you transact with the brand emotionally or experientially. Done well, they become a moat, a moment consumers remember because they participated.

Immediacy is a given. What you do with it is what separates the tactical from the meaningful.

RN: For deeper cultural connections, you need relevant influencers. Just any celebrity can induce a spike that will deflate soon after. Brand managers and agencies need to choose influencers who truly echo the values of the brand, and then invest in that person or activity.

A classic example is when Shah Rukh Khan endorsed Cadbury during Diwali, but the agency used AI to make it look like he was endorsing several small stores that could never dream of having SRK as their brand endorser.

The idea was superb and touched a chord not just with stores who would no doubt give Cadbury products a pride of place on their shelves, but also with consumers who loved the idea of a large brand helping small stores.

This article first appeared in the September issue of Manifest. Get your copy here.