How global brands went local for Diwali 2025

Global brands during Diwali this year once again demonstrated a significant commitment to cultural localisation, moving beyond general festive marketing to embed their products within the specific rituals and emotional narratives of the Indian cultural calendar. This strategy centred on creating emotional resonance and brand preference by aligning with deep-seated consumer values. Instead of focusing solely on the day of the festival, brands this year strategically broadened their focus to the multi-week preparatory phase, including rituals like cleaning, decorating, and the anticipation of family reunions.

The strategy of cultural localisation during Diwali offers global brands several advantages. Primarily, it fosters a deepened emotional connection with the consumer base; by sincerely adopting local narratives and participating in the Indian cultural calendar, these brands shed their image as foreign entities. This strategic shift generates strong emotional recall and goodwill, which are often directly correlated with increased brand preference and loyalty in the market. As the Hansa Research Festive Insights 2025 study suggested 55% of its respondents resonated with cultural storytelling within the advertisements, while 40% said they valued cause-based campaigns.

Ultimately, in a highly saturated and competitive festive advertising landscape, the use of culturally resonant and specific storytelling tends to serve as a market differentiator, enabling these global brands to stand out against generic promotional messages and sales-driven advertisements.

The strategic implementation of these campaigns was diverse yet unified by the goal of emotional connection.

L'Oréal Paris India's campaign, ‘Mujh Mein Hai Diwali,’ leveraged the influence of Bollywood actor and its brand ambassador Alia Bhatt.

The ad narrative centered on sisterhood, featuring Bhatt with her childhood friends. This move strategically integrated the brand's core message, ‘Because You're Worth It,’ with the festive theme, portraying beauty as an inner glow that illuminates relationships, thus achieving cultural relevance through celebrity-driven influence and an emphasis on personal connection.

In the technology sector, Vivo focused its long-running campaign on the core sentiment of #JoyOfHomecoming. The campaign’s creative emphasised the intimate, ‘in-between moments’ of festive preparation, such as decorating the home, which often precedes the main event.

By framing their smartphones as the tool for capturing and connecting over these shared, simple rituals, the brand positioned itself not just as a piece of hardware, but as a facilitator of the festival’s most cherished emotional experience, the family reunion.

Apple executed a highly focused localisation by highlighting the Rangoli, a prominent artistic and ritualistic element of Diwali. The campaign centred around the creation and visual perfection of these intricate floor designs, indirectly showcasing the superior camera and display capabilities of its products.

This strategy allowed Apple to participate visually in a core tradition. Set against a backdrop inspired by rangoli colours such as magenta, yellow, indigo, and green, the video featured dancers moving in coordinated patterns. Their flowing costumes resembled the designs created with coloured powders, and each movement gradually formed new visual motifs, combining elements of dance and visual art.

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Google utilised its advanced Gemini AI to address the practical challenge of festive preparation, specifically home decoration. The campaign positioned the AI tool as a cultural assistant, demonstrating its ability to generate creative, personalised decoration and designs through user prompts.

This approach introduced a global technology by framing it as a utility that simplifies and enhances the time-consuming preparatory rituals, making it relevant and useful within the Indian cultural context.

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Finally, HP maintained its distinctive purpose-driven marketing approach by focusing on the value of local artists and designers. Continuing its tradition of past campaigns that highlighted various artists, this year’s Diwali ad featured a designer, emphasising the importance of valuing the art and artists.

This strategy aimed to position the brand as a socially conscious brand, connecting its technology to the broader ‘Vocal for Local’ sentiment.