India is renowned for its numerous festivals, all of which are enthusiastically celebrated. Events are times for celebration, sharing joyful memories, and shopping high. Hence, brands frequently take advantage of this to highlight their product lines tailored to the season through what is known as festive advertising.
Recognizing the strategy
Marketing efforts increase throughout the festival season. Numerous companies launch ads that take advantage of the holiday spirit to raise brand awareness and increase sales. Discounts may be effective in the short term, but there is a chance that they may be overlooked among the many other similar discount-based communications.
Additionally, most giveaways are provided from the standpoint of the manufacturer or client and may or may not be relevant to the customer’s current needs. An emotional, intangible connection may set a company apart and dramatically increase marketability.
Business architecture
Brands frequently spend more than 25% of their annual advertising budgets on holiday advertising, which consists of a variety of marketing and advertising promotions on holiday offers and promotional discounts across media platforms like television, print, outdoor advertising, radio, and digital media platforms.
Festive advertising is expected to expand by over 10% due to the marketing push, restoring consumer sentiment in the remaining months of 2022 despite reducing consumer spending during the festivals. Providing a smooth experience for potential customers is crucial because it can become a differentiator.
Print
Historically, print advertising has served as a leading indicator of economic recovery. While the Covid-19 second wave made the first quarter of fiscal 2021-22 difficult, the success of print in July 2021 inspired a great deal of hope. Deeper coverage of areas and a significantly shorter lead time were two significant benefits for the print sector.
Advertisers increasingly resort to hyper-local Indian-language newspapers, offering a bigger bang for their buck. Hindi newspapers, with a strong presence in non-metro cities, have garnered a large share of the flurry in advertising in its editions.
TV
TV advertisement volume increases over the holiday season. Though fewer reasons to rejoice after the pandemic, it has increased since 2021. TV advertisements for September 2021 have grown by 15% since 2019.
Many brands that relied heavily on offline marketing and in-store shopping had no option but to join the digital marketing bandwagon to engage with their consumers. In 2021, Hindi-language networks accounted for most TV advertising, while Tamil & Telugu language channels witnessed robust growth in 2020 and 2021.
Radio
Advertising volumes on radio grew by 20% in January-March 2022 when compared to the same period last year, according to TAM Media Research. Services emerged at the top of radio advertising charts accounting for a 30% share of ad volumes.
During the festive season, industries like real estate, retail (textile/apparel, jewellery, furniture/home décor, shopping), healthcare, BFSI, and education have increased their presence on local and national-level FM channels. They use FM to raise awareness, increase sales through promotions and discounts, and interact with consumers through content.
