DOMS festive film lets kids choose their own future

DOMS Industries has entered the festive advertising season not by pushing a product, but by pushing back on one of Indian parenting’s oldest habits: deciding a child’s future before the child does. The stationery brand’s new film, created with Havas Creative India, turns the act of gifting into a quiet argument for children’s own agency.

01 · A family gathering full of imagined futures

The film follows Tara at a festive family gathering. Every relative hands her a DOMS gift, and every gift carries a plan—one nudges her toward business, another toward art, a third toward architecture. The gestures are warm, but the pattern is the point: each present is someone else’s tomorrow, wrapped and handed over with love.

The emotional turn comes when Tara asks her brother what he wants her to become. Instead of naming a profession, he gives her a gift that lets her choose for herself. Tara beams and reveals her own dream—travelling the world. The film closes with the line, “Iss tyohaar, unka kal mat chuniye. Unhein har kal ke liye tayyaar kijiye”—don’t choose their tomorrow; prepare them for every tomorrow.

02 · The thinking behind the campaign

Anupama Ramaswamy, Managing Director and Chief Creative Officer at Havas Creative India, frames the insight plainly: “As adults, we often dream of a future for our children, sometimes forgetting that they have dreams of their own.” The creative challenge, she says, is to nudge families away from that instinct—gently, without turning the film into a lecture.

Santosh Raveshia, Managing Director of DOMS Industries, ties the story to the gifting range. “At DOMS, we believe every ambition needs preparation,” he says, positioning the product as the tool for whatever future a child picks, rather than the future itself. Saumitra Prasad, Chief Marketing Officer at DOMS Industries, extends the thought: “Every gift can spark creativity, nurture ambition, and help prepare children to turn their dreams into reality.”

03 · What this reframes for festive gifting

Festive gifting advertising usually runs on sentiment and size—bigger boxes, grander gestures. This film runs on strategy. The gift becomes a symbol of permission rather than prescription, and that gives a brand built on pencils, colours and craft supplies a distinct reason to be in a festival conversation that could easily belong to sweets, apparel or jewellery.

The campaign does three things worth noting:

• It names a real tension. Indian festive gifting often carries expectations—which stream, which career, which life. The film acknowledges that without villainising anyone.
• It lets the product be the answer. The gift that matters isn’t a career kit; it’s the one that hands the choice back to Tara.
• It ties the range to a belief. The festive line becomes proof of the idea that every ambition needs preparation, not just another seasonal SKU push.

The film arrives in the thick of India’s festive advertising window, when Diwali-driven campaigns compete hardest for family attention. By choosing not to out-sentiment its rivals but to out-argue them, DOMS gives marketing teams a different reason to remember the brand after the sweets are finished.

04 · The marketing take

For brand leaders, the reusable device is simple and surprisingly rare: let the adult step back, and let the child close the loop. The product earns its place not by being featured, but by being the instrument of a child’s own choice. In a season crowded with relatives telling children what to become, DOMS has positioned itself as the brand that hands them the pen to write their own answer.

Source: MediaNews4U

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