10 festive ads: chosen family, absurd humour and Halloween

Diwali marketing has a way of flattening every brand into the same warm glow. This week’s crop of ads did not escape the pull—Titan, Samsung and Maggi all went for the family—but the standout films earned their attention by committing hard to one direction: heartfelt, ridiculous or seasonally spooky.

01 · The emotional lane is crowded, but still working

Titan’s “Chosen Family” pushes past the usual family reunion to argue that friends, mentors and companions can become kin through shared experience. Samsung India’s flagship Micro RGB TV film, conceptualised by Cheil India, follows a little girl who finds her place in festive preparations only when the family gathers around a screen. Maggi’s “The Togetherness Table” turns a social experiment into an ad: an interactive table shows parents, children, couples and siblings how much they actually know about each other, making emotional distance visible in real time.

The thread is consistent. In a season of gifting and spending, these brands are selling connection, not consumption.

02 · The comic counterweight

Celebrity and absurdity did the job where emotion was not the fit. Zomato’s “Saif’s Diwali Party” has Saif Ali Khan receive towels, bedsheets, soaps and crockery with a flat “WOW”, then brighten when a delivery partner brings a food hamper. Google Gemini’s “Tyohaar-Maxxing” puts Sunil Grover into multiple avatars across two families, showing the AI assistant helping with planning, decoration and creative touches. Škoda Auto India and BBH India build a Slavia film around a cow that can climb a staircase but cannot come down—a deliberately random conversation that ends on the car without a conventional pitch. Mentos Fresh Action Candy uses a flour-mill gust to clean up a mill owner before a wedding, landing the flour on his wife.

Hinge, created by Talented, takes the gentler side of the same insight. “Small Gestures, Big Love Stories” spans four films and six shorter stories drawn from real experiences, from remembering details about a partner’s family to putting up a balcony net for a fear of birds.

03 · Halloween is creeping into India’s calendar

Beyond Diwali, two campaigns leaned into Halloween. Candyman reimagines the Bollywood thriller Darr as a playful scare that ends in sweets, and Tesla’s over-the-air “Halloween Mode” gives Model Y and Model Y L owners a ghost-themed car avatar, spooky sounds, flickering lights, seasonal wraps, a light show, a Trick or Treat approach mode, Photobooth and a “Voice From Beyond” that plays messages through the car.

04 · What brand leaders should take from the week

Ten campaigns fought for attention in a cluttered festive window. The ones that landed did not try to be everything:

• Pick a lane. Titan, Samsung and Maggi went emotionally specific; Zomato, Google, Škoda and Mentos went knowingly funny.
• Make the product the resolution, not the pitch. Škoda’s stair-climbing cow and Mentos’ wind gust both arrive as the payoff, not a spec sheet.
• Watch the second festival. Halloween is small in India but gives brands a low-stakes way to borrow horror codes without leaving their category.

For brand leaders, the week is a useful reminder: in a crowded festive season, the middle ground between sentiment and comedy is where campaigns go to be forgotten.

Source: Indian Advertising Media & Marketing News – exchange4media

Mad About Marketing Desk The strategists and writers at Mad About Marketing, writing up what we see in the work every week.