Brands add sparkle to festive season with regional marketing

When it comes to festivals, India is eclectic with each region showcasing distinct ways of celebrating. While Onam heralds the celebrations in the South, Ganesh Chathurthi sees celebrations across India with different fervours. The country is in the midst of festivities and has only recently concluded celebrating Navratri, Durga Puja and Dussehra.

Brands are informed of these differences and are now cashing in on the unique regional ways of celebration with targeted ads, offers and campaigns.

While Shoppers Stop’s Durga Pujo campaign called ‘Sajer Utsav’ caters to the Bengali audience for their biggest festival of the year, their Diwali campaign “Tyohar Ki Nayi Kashish” is catering to different Hindi-speaking consumers.

Max Fashion, on the other hand, focussed on Telangana’s celebration of Dussehra through a cultural campaign of building the largest Bommala Koluvu. Scarecrow M&C Saatchi and Reliance Jewels have also come up with a tribute to the craft, culture and creativity of Bengal with “Swarn Banga '' Jewellery collection campaign for a regional touch.

Speaking about how Suta has deployed campaigns for both Dussehra and Durga Puja, Co-founder Sujata Biswas said that the brand categorised its marketing efforts into Pujo and Dussehra campaigns. The former was centred on reviving nostalgia of Durga Puja in Bengal and the latter had a broader, more unifying approach.

Suta drove attention to its products through Meta ads, digital marketing campaigns, newsletters and on-ground exhibitions. For regional languages, the brand leveraged radio, newspaper ads and billboards.

“We certainly think that regional marketing becomes especially important and relevant during festivities. Regional marketing speaks the language of the targeted audience, which makes it much more effective” Biswas added.

Regional marketing over the festive period may, in fact, give many firms a greater return on investment (ROI), but it's not a one-size-fits-all approach, said Milind Mathur Creative Director and Partner, Kohinoor Jewellers.

“The nature of the business, the target market, and the campaign's particular objectives are just a few of the variables that affect how well regional marketing initiatives perform during festivals. Festivals have a strong cultural and traditional foundation. Marketing campaigns may be made to be more relevant to the target audience by being tailored to coincide with regional festivities and customs," he noted.

Mathur explained how the jewellery brand places great emphasis on the information gleaned from the local ad budget division and findings of its marketing initiatives during various holiday seasons. "Our strategy for allocating advertising funds across areas is specifically designed to be in line with our corporate goals, client demographics, and market trends," he emphasised.

Samit Sinha, Managing Partner of Alchemist Brand Consulting noted that for national brands to penetrate the Indian market deeply, they have to adopt a region-specific approach in their communication.

“Strong brands find a way to tweak their brand narrative to give them market-specific flavours, without diluting their essence or their positioning. This would mean contextualising brand themes for each of the main markets to maximise relatability. This is especially true in the choice of brand endorsers and festivals.

"Rajnikant would be irrelevant in West Bengal, as would Sunny Deol in Tamil Nadu. Ganesh Utsav would evoke as little fervour in Assam, as say, Chhath Puja in Kerala. Brands that recognise this and adapt themselves to make a more intimate connection with the consumers of each specific market are the ones I believe are doing it right," he pointed out.

Speaking about the expected ROI from such campaigns, Sinha explained, “While adapting a central communication theme into multiple market-specific campaigns does increase the advertising investment, in the form of multiple celebrities (if using celebrity brand endorsers), more production costs, as well as the increase in cumulative media spends, I believe the greater returns in terms of consumer engagement more than compensates for it. In fact, the ROI’s can occasionally be several times higher, if done well, which means tweaking the flavour relevantly without disturbing the essence of the brand’s communication theme.”

Perfora, a D2C company, is also looking to capitalise on the festive season, through pop-ups or on-ground activations across different regions and micro-markets. Speaking on their ad budget distribution across regions, Jatan Bawa, Co-founder, Perfora added, “With respect to ad budget divisions for various regions, we’re actually focusing a lot more on north and east as a market.

"Furthermore, we’ve distributed our budgets in a 70/30 ratio catering to digital and offline activations respectively. The response so far for the buildup of the festive season has been good, we’ve seen good acceptance in terms of ROI from the audience," he informed.

Adarsh Sharma, Chief Business Officer, FS Life also opines that a regional approach during the festive season is the best way of converting sales. “Festivals like Dussehra uphold a huge religious and cultural significance and to let our customers embrace it more we plan on showcasing colours, fabrics and silhouettes that speak festivity. Our campaigns across all brands would include content on social media, influencer marketing and ads. Rather than outrightly talk about festivals, we let our products and the communication around them be a celebration in itself.

Considering people's busy lifestyles, marketing products that they relate to is definitely a better strategy than one-size-fits. While it’s true at most times, showcasing the most relevant products and messaging which is more relatable matters a lot more in the festive season.”

With the festive season to begin in full swing, it is to be seen how advertisers bring out their regional element amid an ongoing World Cup and festival season to make the most of their ad budgets.