Inside Navratri marketing: Experts decode the 30-40% ad wastage problem

Among the most vibrant and soulful festivals in India is Navratri. It stretches across nine days, nine nights, and multiple cultural expressions. That also means nine times the clutter, clichés, copy-paste campaigns, and at least nine ways to get your campaign lost in the noise. The result? Every festive season, a significant chunk of brands’ ad budgets go to waste.

While the consumer is spinning to garba beats, brands often spin themselves into irrelevance by chasing shortcuts, leaning on tropes, or ignoring regional nuance.

To decode where the money leaks and how to plug it, we turned to voices across media, creative, and marketing who’ve seen these festive fumbles play out firsthand.

When your planning fails to deliver

Media planning during Navratri can be the difference between being remembered and being muted. But too often, it’s done in a rush.

“Poor planning of premise, placements and uninspiring creatives are often the biggest reasons why campaigns are lost in the clutter,” said Guru Mishra, SVP- Media, RepIndia. 

Mistimed media planning can undermine your campaign’s results.

“Festive planning must be done well in advance based on overarching communication strategy and objectives,” he advised.

But targeting troubles? Think of it as the festive equivalent of stepping on someone’s toes during garba.

“Brands often misjudge audience targeting which is not in alignment with the creative communication resulting in money going down the drain with estimated 30-40% ad wastage during festive season every year,” Mishra pointed out. 

In other words, the wrong message to the wrong people at the wrong time is an expensive Navratri blunder.

Abhishek Shetty, Head of Marketing at Swiggy Instamart, saw a similar problem from the brand side. “Navratri clutter happens when brands confuse louder with smarter. Too many fall back on the same garba clichés or generic discounts, and in the rush to tick the festive box, campaigns look rushed and forgettable,” he shared.

Avoid the clichés and hit the mark with strategy, timing, and targeting so your campaign dances its way into memory rather than getting lost in the festive noise. 

Now that we know the media blunders, let’s see how creativity missteps can steal the spotlight.

Creative shortcuts that kill the mood

If media mistakes drain budgets, creative clichés drain hearts. Navratri campaigns often stumble by sticking to predictable visuals and narratives.

“Nothing weakens the campaign more than vector dandiya shots and ‘Nine days, Nine colours’ narrative,” said Yash Kulshreshth, CCO & Co-founder, ^atom Network. The irony? “The audience doesn’t feel that way. They find relatability and relevance in tropes and clichés. It is short-lived and doesn’t dwell for long in consumers’ hearts,” he added.

For brands, the lesson is not to avoid tropes entirely but to elevate them with cultural nuance and deeper storytelling. Kulshreshth warned against the laziest shortcut of them all. He said, “The colour-of-the-day plug is the laziest template. No real thought, no fresh story, just a copy-paste tactic every year. Ban it and you’ll force marketers to think beyond the colour chart.”

Shetty echoed this sentiment and added a practical brand lens: “Consumers today don’t want another ‘Navratri special’ banner, they want ideas that make their celebration easier, brighter, or more fun.”

So the next time you’re tempted to plaster your product on a garba poster, ask yourself, are you adding joy to the dance floor or just serving beats no one wants to dance to?

Culture isn’t copy-paste

Navratri isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s celebrated differently in Baroda, Bangalore, and Bengal, and campaigns that ignore this diversity risk falling flat.

Mishra underlined this in his “red flag checklist” for brands, “Each geography is different therefore cultural and nuances must be considered. Use of generic content [is a mistake].” For him, the true danger is adopting a “spray and paint method” where the same creative is blasted across markets without localisation.

Adding a creative perspective, Kulshreshth said, “Respect the regional flavours. What works in Baroda may flop in Bangalore. Coca-Cola shows how it is done.” 

He also cautioned against opportunism. He said, “When work looks like a generic greeting card from Archie's, it feels opportunistic if the product has no cultural or emotional link to the festival. The audience senses when the brand is ‘dressing up’ for Navratri instead of truly showing up.”

The underlying message? Don’t hijack culture. Participate authentically. Because consumers will forgive cliché faster than they’ll forgive tone-deafness.

Where brands go wrong

Between the clutter, clichés, and cultural missteps, it’s all too easy to get Navratri festive marketing wrong. Think of this as a checklist of festive pitfalls, decoded by the experts:

• Plan early and segment wisely, or watch 30-40% of your budget go up in the bonfire of bad targeting.

• Ditch creative shortcuts like colour-of-the-day templates or vector dandiya art, they rarely survive the nine nights.

• Root your brand in culture and real consumer value, not just seasonal opportunism.

• Be distinct and purpose-driven to truly stand out.

• Set measurement and KPIs up front, they can’t be an afterthought.

• Take a platform-agnostic approach, the same creative won’t work everywhere.

As Kulshreshth put it: “If your idea can be replicated with a ₹500 Canva template, it isn’t worth spending crores to amplify.”

Shetty concluded, “It's simple: don’t recycle, reimagine; don’t interrupt, enable; and don’t chase attention, earn it by being genuinely useful in the moment of festivity.”

And maybe that’s the true test of Navratri marketing. If your campaign feels like a festival playlist on shuffle, predictable, already heard, you’ve lost the dance before it even began.