The real AI advantage this festive season is strategy, say leaders

At Festive Marketing Camp, a panel titled‘Beyond Creative - The Real AI Advantage for Festive Campaigns’ examined how AI is reshaping festive campaigns - moving beyond surface-level creativity to drive precision, scale, and measurable impact. In a season marked by heightened competition and rapidly shifting consumer behaviour, the panel explored how brands can balance human creativity with AI-driven efficiency to engage audiences more effectively.

Panelists

• Session Chair - Hitesh Rajwani, CEO, Social Samosa
• Nishant Kedia, CMO, Rebel Foods
• Sarina Menezes, Senior VP Marketing and Corporate Communications, Oberoi Realty
• Shams Jasani, Co-Founder & CEO, The Blurr
• Udit Malhotra, Head of Marketing, JSW MG Motor India

AI as the change driver

Setting the tone of the discussion, panellists agreed that Artificial Intelligence cannot replace human creativity or emotion but is emerging as a powerful enabler for marketers in today’s landscape.

“AI plays a key role in creating personalised yet progressive customer experiences,” said Malhotra, noting that it gives brands the agility to scale campaigns with higher personalisation.

For Jasani, the shift is levelling the playing field. “AI can’t replace humans, but it allows us to compete with larger agencies that used to deploy hundreds of people. It helps shorten the time required for the early stages of script and creative thinking,” he said.

Menezes highlighted the precision advantage, especially for premium and luxury brands. “For housing, the push strategy is far stronger than pull. AI helps us understand consumer insights, behaviours, and shopping trends with sharper accuracy,” she explained.

From a digital-first perspective, Kedia shared that “97% of sales originated digitally at Rebel Foods, and AI plays a role across both demand and supply - whether it’s customer targeting, personalisation, or even deciding what to stop and where at a warehouse level.”

Balancing automation and human insight

While exploring ways to strike the right balance between AI-driven automation and preserving the human touch in brand engagement, Malhotra started by citing JSW MG Motor’s Onam campaign as an example, leveraging Kerala’s 86% EV adoption to build community-driven content. He noted that 66% percent of car buying happens from word of mouth. While AI helps evaluate faster, it’s the balance of human and AI creativity that delivers results, he explained.

Kedia further tied this to food and festivals, where regional preferences dominate. “Festive growth often comes from localised supply. Humans know the insights, AI executes them,” he said, citing the brand’s Diwali campaign from 2024. He explained how their campaign was conceptualised by humans and executed by AI, highlighting the role of human creativity in marketing. He noted, ‘human intervention is necessary to ensure cultural relevance.’

Jasani, on the other hand, pointed out how trend-spotting has accelerated. “Cultural shifts used to take months to identify. With AI, hyperpersonalisation and behavioural insights come much faster,” he explained.

AI in the festive season

Following on the lines of AI and human working together to provide the best results, Menezes brought in the lens of retail, underlining how “speed and spotting trends are as important as precise targeting.”

She recalled Oberoi Realty’s wedding book campaign in malls, built around rising footfall during the wedding season, and emphasised the relevance of planning around cultural phases like shraadh, when purchase behaviour temporarily slows. She explained how the consumers still visit malls not for the sole purpose of shopping, but for the experience, like food zones, time zones, entertainment, among others.

Adding further to it, for Kedia, AI insights at his brand serve as validation rather than the primary driver. “We look at sales pools, D2C keywords, and search data. AI won’t be the only insight source, but with deeper data, we can imagine a future where food discovery itself is AI-driven,” he said.

Malhotra expanded this discussion to martech, observing, “Technology is just an enabler. Unless you utilise it effectively, it’s useless. What martech is doing for your business is what matters.”

Tools, metrics and guardrails

The panel also delved into how brands are measuring AI’s impact, the tools they rely on, and the guardrails needed to ensure its effective adoption.

On performance, Malhotra shared that AI has improved funnel efficiency by 6-8%, especially in customer acquisition. Jasani reminded that “40% of all category sales happen in the festive season, with hyperpersonalisation, communication works harder for you.”

On the contrary, Menezes cautioned against blind adoption, “Don’t be gullible. You have to be prudent about brand safety and bandwidth. Not every AI application will fit your brand.”

Agreeing with what Menezes said, Kedia mentioned how Rebel Foods has integrated multiple AI tools, including stitching video and audio together, with Kedia noting that over 50% of their creatives now come from AI. He also highlighted the fact, “We started small, figured out what worked and what didn’t, and kept it dynamic,” he said.

As the discussion concluded, panellists summed up what the ‘real AI advantage’ means for them.

• ‘Personalisation at scale,’ said Malhotra.
• ‘Pushing the limits of what humans can think,’ added Jasani.
• ‘If you are leveraging AI, make sure it’s built to last,’ cautioned Menezes.
• 'Figure out the role AI plays for you, and how that role evolves over time,’ noted Kedia.