CMOs reveal campaigns they wish were theirs

If history books bother to record the mood of Madison Avenue and Mumbai in 2025, they won't talk about growth. They'll talk about The Great Contraction.

It was the year the map got smaller. In November, the rumors finally crystallised into reality as the Omnicom-IPG merger closed, a seismic consolidation that erased the ‘Big Six’ and left us with an industry dominated by monolithic giants. Wall Street had spoken: in a world ruled by algorithms, scale is the only currency that matters.

But while the boardrooms obsessed over efficiency, the creative work told a different story, one defined by a beautiful, jagged irony.

The biggest joke of 2025? The tech giants told it on themselves. We watched heritage brands like Coca-Cola and Toys "R" Us rush to fire their copywriters and flood our feeds with AI-generated holiday spots. The result was plastic nostalgia, uncanny valley simulations that felt as cold as the code that birthed them.

Then, in a twist nobody saw coming, the AI companies did the exact opposite. OpenAI didn't use Sora to sell ChatGPT. They hired human directors. They shot on 35mm film. They released the "Everyday Moments" campaign, a series of slow, quiet spots showing people cooking dinner or fixing a bike. The irony was suffocating: The company building the machine was desperate to look human, while brands that sell to humans were racing to become machines.

And then, just as the algorithms were shouting their loudest, the industry lost its voice.

The passing of Piyush Pandey in October wasn't just a headline, but a spiritual blow. The Lion of St. Mark, the man who taught a billion Indians that brands could have a heartbeat, from Fevicol to Cadbury, left us exactly when we needed him most. His absence stood as a stark reminder: You can prompt a video generator to mimic a sunset, but you cannot automate the kind of empathy that makes a nation cry.

That tension, between the cold logic of the merger and the warm legacy of Pandey, triggered a return to craft. The best work of 2025 wasn't optimised. It was stubborn.

Apple learned its lesson from the 2024 ‘Crush’ backlash. This year, they doubled down on ‘Made by Humans,’ turning the absence of AI in their creative process into a luxury status symbol.

Swiggy ignored the six-second rule entirely, releasing a long-format film about a delivery partner, while Whatsapp released a 9 minute film about a love story that started with voice notes. CRED continued its streak of high-budget absurdity, proving that in an era of algorithmic sameness, being ‘weird’ might be the only competitive advantage left.

So as we close the books on a year defined by mergers, machines, and more, we decided to ignore the balance sheets and talk to marketing leaders.

We asked them to look across the aisle, at the quiet innovations from Tata, the defiance of Apple, the chaotic brilliance of independent shops, and tell us about the one campaign from 2025 that made them stop, stare, and feel that purely human pang of envy:

"Damn, I wish I'd done that."

Ankit Patidar, Chief Marketing Officer, Shakti Pumps

There are very few campaigns that make you stop mid-scroll and think, this should have come from my team. Swiggy Instamart’s “Groom? Broom?” is one of them.
Built on a deceptively simple five-word promise get anything delivered in 10 minutes, the film turns a routine product claim into a bold cultural moment. The idea hinges on a universally relatable insight: a tiny typo at the worst possible time can create outsized chaos. By stretching this everyday UX reality to a cinematic extreme, delivering a groom instead of a broom, Instamart makes its promise unforgettable.

What truly stands out is how cleanly the humour ladders back to the brand. Instead of talking about assortment or speed, the campaign shows it, exaggerating the proposition just enough to make it land. If you ask for it, they’ll get it.
The craft elevates the idea further. In just 30 seconds, the film feels like a mini Bollywood set-piece, with deadpan performances, precise timing, and visual comedy that makes it impossible to ignore.
Strategically, “Groom? Broom?” does something crucial for quick commerce: it expands mental availability beyond groceries to almost anything on demand. It’s sharp, culturally fluent, and brave — exactly the kind of work every marketer wishes they’d signed off on.

Brinda Agrawal, Chief Marketing Officer, Ultra Media & Entertainment Group

The campaign I genuinely wish we had created this year is Spotify Wrapped. It nailed something every marketer chases but rarely achieves, making data feel deeply personal and proudly shareable. Music is intimate. It soundtracks our workouts, heartbreaks, late nights, and Bollywood obsessions and Wrapped turned that private relationship into a public celebration.

What sealed it for me was how naturally it lived on Instagram Stories. People didn’t repost it for rewards, they did it because it felt like sharing a piece of themselves. Between playlists, filmi phases and surprise artist videos, everyone had a Wrapped moment they wanted to share. It wraps the year by revealing how deeply music runs through your life and your identity.

Dhimant Bakshi, CEO and CMO of Imagicaa

Looking back at this year, one campaign I genuinely wish our team had created is Britannia’s “Nature Shapes Britannia” outdoor initiative. What stood out immediately was the clarity of its insight: that sustainability doesn’t need to be spoken about loudly if it can be demonstrated meaningfully. Instead of forcing visibility by cutting or ignoring trees, the campaign let nature dictate the form of the billboard itself. That single decision flipped the conventions of outdoor advertising on their head.

From an execution standpoint, it was both brave and beautifully restrained. The hoardings were physically contoured around Neem and Peepal trees, turning branches and foliage into part of the visual language. Using biodegradable cotton materials and pairing the installations with Britannia’s ESG milestones — from plastic neutrality to water conservation — ensured the message was rooted in action, not symbolism alone. It’s rare to see sustainability communicated in such a tangible, lived-in way.
Culturally, the campaign felt perfectly in sync with the moment we’re in. Consumers today are quick to call out greenwashing, and this work avoided that trap by letting behaviour lead communication. For me, it’s a benchmark for modern marketing: where innovation, purpose and creativity come together not to interrupt people, but to respectfully coexist with their environment.

Dr. Ashish Bajaj, Group Chief Marketing Officer, Narayana Health

One campaign I truly admired this year, and wish we had created, was The Health Factory’s brand film starring Milind Soman, which used humour and role-reversal to spotlight its zero-maida, high-protein everyday bread. In the ad, even fitness icon Milind Soman is playfully “schooled” by health-savvy youngsters about the benefits of the healthiest bread in town, turning a staple food into a fun, memorable health conversation.

The campaign worked because it didn’t take the usual celebrity endorsement route, instead, it flipped the narrative by making a fitness legend the student, using witty moments to highlight the product’s clean-label benefits in a crowded health-food category. Much like Orient’s iconic PSPO fan campaign, which built mass curiosity by calling out what people “didn’t know” about performance, this film uses humour and role reversal to challenge everyday food assumptions and spotlight superior product credentials. It blended credibility, simplicity, and culturally relevant humour to make healthy eating feel accessible and engaging for everyday consumers.

Manish Agarwal – Chief Marketing Advisor, ZOFF Foods

As marketers, we all chase that elusive idea that shapes not just brand perception but the culture around it. Campaigns like Zepto’s Fake Shaadi show the real power of this approach. It wasn’t a one-off stunt, but a smartly designed cluster play — using a familiar Indian social moment, amplified through the right influencer ecosystem, to create massive reach and participation.

What made it work was how it became a genuine interaction platform. Partner brands got meaningful visibility, creators got organic content moments, and consumers felt part of something unfolding in real time. The result was a clear win-win-win, backed by strong earned media and conversations well beyond the campaign window — all without leaning on discounts or seasonal triggers..

Vitasta Kaul, Chief Marketing Officer at Hoopr

'Two campaigns that truly stood out for me this year were Swiggy’s Navratri collaboration with Falguni Pathak and its meme-first campaign with Rakhi Sawant. What made the Falguni campaign stand out was its cultural precision, using familiar festive music and movement-led Reels to participate organically in how audiences were already celebrating Navratri online.

On the other hand, the Rakhi Sawant campaign was intentional in its approach and, thus, loud and self-aware, transforming the use of over-the-top music and dialogues into remarkable audio memes that could be shared. What differentiates both as benchmarks is the capability of Swiggy to allow music to characterize the idea itself, thus, proving that modern marketing is not about tone consistency but about being momentarily culturally right.'