Building culture-first brands during the festive season

Fundamentally, culture-first marketing is about making meaning from the things we consume. If a brand is focused on meaning-making, chances are it is also focused on money-making.

Culture is relevance. A brand needs to be relevant in the context of its target audience. Culture-first branding or advertising isn’t only about trends; it goes deeper than what we call 'trends'. Trends are like flash floods: sudden, noisy, and short-lived. Culture is like a river, always flowing, shaping the land, sustaining life, and carrying memory. 

A brand that flows with the river, guided by cultural intelligence, becomes part of memory. A brand that chases flash floods stays visible for a moment, then is gone.

What culture-first looks like 

When brands behave like cultural products, not just items to be consumed, it gets amplified during festive seasons. If they want to shape how we speak, act, or what we hold dear, they must shape the cultural ideology first. Only then can they flow into the wider cultural production of music, film, literature, dance or fashion.

Take Amul. Many brands with mascots are forgotten, but the Amul girl has survived, in fact, thrived. She has always been relevant because she mirrors India’s cultural mood, politics, cricket, festivals, and meme-worthy moments. The brand reflects how people talk, laugh, and live. That’s why Amul is not just a dairy brand; it’s an emotional landmark.

Take beauty, for example. For years, festive beauty was framed around fairness. Today, the ideology has shifted to wellbeing. From body health to skin health, from gut health to mental health, every layer has become more granular. This isn’t just marketing; it reflects how society itself is reimagining beauty.

Jewellery, too, often steps beyond product to touch cultural chords of togetherness. It doesn’t just sell jewellery; it shapes how we imagine individuality, love, gifting, and memory.

F&B brands like Swiggy and Zomato, at their best, don’t just sell food during festivals; they remind us of longing, distance, and togetherness. Quick commerce is redefining waiting. Festive anticipation now meets instant availability, changing how we shop, gift, and celebrate.

The LOCUL® Lens 

This is where culture-first thinking becomes actionable. At Fire & Waterr Consulting, I developed the LOCUL framework to simplify cultural nuance into five cues:

Locality: Festivals feel different in a Mumbai housing society, a Banaras ghat, or a New Jersey diaspora hall. Context is everything.

Origin: Rituals matter, but so does how they evolve, from puja at home to Zoom aarti with family abroad.

4 Cs & Truths: Balancing category truths, consumer realities, company voice and cultural meaning. Miss one and the campaign rings hollow.

User Experience: Celebrations today are hybrid, WhatsApp invites, shopping apps, AR filters, alongside the smell of new clothes and the sound of crackers. The brand experience must flow seamlessly across both worlds.

Lingua Franca: Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Hinglish, even emoji. Festivals speak in many tongues. Brands must land their message in the rhythm people actually celebrate. These aren’t boxes to tick. They are living cues to enter culture with respect and originality.

From discounts to belonging 

Festivals aren’t marketing seasons. They are opportunities for brands to become cultural authorities. What people remember isn’t the discount they redeemed, but whether a brand made them feel seen, understood, and celebrated.

A brand that understands cultural intelligence belongs to the people. A brand that doesn’t belong in a boardroom.

This article is penned by Rupesh Kashyap, Founder & CCO of  FIRE & WATER® CONSULTING.

Disclaimer: The article features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the stance of the publication.