This year's Diwali campaigns in India marked a significant shift in how brands approach festive storytelling. Artificial intelligence has transitioned from being a backend tool to becoming central to creative strategies. Brands are now leveraging AI to craft personalized, culturally resonant experiences that go beyond traditional advertising.
A notable example of this trend is the collaboration between Coca-Cola and Google, which launched the ‘Festicons’ campaign during Diwali 2025. This initiative allowed consumers to create personalized Diwali avatars using Google's Gemini app. By scanning QR codes on Coca-Cola's limited-edition Utsav Packs, users could design their unique "Festicons" by selecting festive personas and Diwali icons. The Gemini app then merged these choices into shareable digital stickers, which users could download and share using the hashtag #MyFesticon.
Watch the campaign here:
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The success of campaigns like Festicons reflects a broader industry trend where AI is being utilized to enhance creative processes and consumer engagement. According to Arjit Sachdeva, co-founder of VDO.AI, “This Diwali marked the moment AI became part of the creative vocabulary, not just the backend toolkit.” He adds, “Brands moved far beyond templated storytelling, leveraging predictive media buying, real-time CTV storytelling, and hyper-personalised video experiences that adapt to a viewer’s context, language, and purchase intent.”
In support of this shift, VDO.AI’s Festive Report for 2025 found that campaigns combining AI-driven contextual targeting with localised narratives delivered 2× higher engagement and 1.7× higher viewability compared with non-AI campaigns. Sachdeva describes how connected television (CTV) has become the “centrepiece of this shift”, with brands deploying interactive overlays, shoppable units, pause-screen formats and QR-enabled experiences. For instance, viewers watching a festive spot on their smart TV could pause it, tap into a carousel of product offers, and make a purchase, all from the ad unit itself. “This Diwali, nearly 58% of our partner campaigns leveraged AI and AI-driven DCO (Dynamic Creative Optimisation) tech, encompassing contextual creative generation, predictive audience mapping, and dynamic storytelling across formats like CTV shoppable units, OLV carousel, and rich media display experiences,” says Sachdeva, highlighting the scale of AI integration across the industry.
The Gemini Nano Banana trend also went viral, with users generating Bollywood-style AI portraits featuring temple backdrops, designer Indian outfits, and other festive aesthetics, capturing Diwali in a highly personalized way. Fortune Oil also leveraged AI to produce a heartwarming video campaign titled ‘Home-Cooked Diwali’, highlighting the emotional value of homemade meals during the festival. Meanwhile, Samsung showcased its Bespoke AI Digital Appliances and Vision AI Televisions, offering consumers smarter, more personalized shopping experiences, and Ray-Ban’s Meta glasses introduced Diwali-themed filters and UPI payments to engage Indian users during the season.
But, Vivek Bhargava, Co-founder of Consumr.ai, adds a crucial layer of interpretation, “AI is quietly reshaping festive marketing – not by replacing creativity, but by sharpening intuition. This Diwali, brands have used AI to understand the why behind every choice, not just the what.” He mentions that through their TwinSights 2025 Festive Report, they saw how intent forms early, in cultural cues, peer conversations, and micro-moments often going unnoticed. “That insight,” he adds, “allows marketers to anticipate motivations, personalize with precision, and design experiences that feel naturally human. The future of consumer engagement lies in this balance, where data powers empathy and technology deepens connection. AI as the amplifier of authenticity, not its replacement.” Bhargava emphasizes that AI allows brands to listen better and uncover subtle behavioral cues, regional rituals, and cultural symbols. When combined with empathy, personalization stops feeling mechanical and becomes deeply human.
Similarly, Prrincey Roy, co-founder and CEO of Huella Services, notes, “It’s no longer about serving a customised ad; it’s about sensing emotion in real time and adapting the story accordingly. With AIgnite we are witnessing that AI brings incredible intelligence, but it’s still our responsibility as marketers to use it with intuition. We are seeing AIgnite as a strong creative partner, not the creator. Because the future of engagement isn’t machine-led, it’s human-led, powered by smarter technology.” Roy pushes the creative boundary further, arguing that the future of engagement lies in campaigns that feel alive and responsive, rather than static. She explains that while AI provides intelligence, human wisdom determines when and how to use it. Their data shows that nearly 70% of their festive campaigns involved AI, improving engagement by almost 40% while maintaining authenticity.
But amidst the optimism, Naresh Gupta, founder and managing partner of Bang In The Middle, offers a reality check, “There is no new dramatic creative experiment that I have seen that is being created using AI. There has been a much wider use, but nothing dramatic. This Diwali, no brand is trying to solve a crisis, do public service, or change behaviour. It has been business as usual. From the end consumer perspective, it doesn’t matter how the message was created, what matters is what the message says. If a brand wants its personality to be authentic and real, it will find a way to balance creativity with tech, but if the brand is looking at short-term impact, it may not bother with authenticity.”
He expresses that AI has been used more as an enhancer in the creative function; none of the work has been fully AI-generated either in copy or visual. AI itself is in infancy, so to presume that a long-term trend is difficult to be witnessed.
On the operational side, Venugopal Nair, Chief Business Officer at Fixderma, shares, “First, AI helps cut down on high production costs — what would typically cost upwards of ₹10 lakhs can now be executed for nearly ₹3 lakhs. The impact on ROI is significant; our returns on ad spend have been almost 3X higher. Second, through dynamic ad optimization, AI allows brands to detect consumer buying behavior, preferences, and searches, and serve content and offers accordingly. This creates a win-win: brands see better returns, and consumers get what they actually need.” Nair mentioned that ahead of Diwali, Fixderma had introduced an AI-based skin analyzer feature on their website, which allows consumers to receive personalized product recommendations based on their skin type and concerns. He added that this initiative aligns with the brand’s focus on making personalization both practical and valuable.
Saurabh Parmar, Fractional CMO, points to the evolving role of AI in India, “So brands using AI have definitely increased and the personalization has become better. But frankly, the personalization right now is more superficial, things like name or city, demographic information, versus personalization based on your own data. A brand might message me saying ‘Saurabh, wishing you a happy Diwali,’ versus using AI to understand my interests, the best time to reach out, or the type of communication that will resonate. In India, AI is mostly used in the generative space rather than leveraging buying behavior and consumer data to optimize campaigns. Globally, brands launch multiple campaigns, test them rapidly, and iterate, which delivers higher ROI. Here, we are still focused on mass-scale advertising versus real-time optimization.” Parmar emphasizes that while AI-driven personalization is growing, India is yet to fully adopt behavior-based targeting and rapid iterative testing seen in global markets. Many campaigns remain in “advertisement mass-scale mode,” which limits the potential ROI that smart AI applications can bring.
Across these voices, one idea emerges consistently: AI should amplify human creativity, not replace it. Campaigns that succeed this season combined data-driven intelligence with cultural authenticity and emotional resonance, using technology to enhance storytelling rather than dictate it.
Watch the Diwali ad for Fortune:
As video becomes both content and commerce, through pause-screen shopping units on CTV, dynamically adaptive creatives, and predictive targeting, brands are moving toward immediacy, relevance, and actionable engagement. Those that succeed will be the ones capable of orchestrating billions of data points into emotionally intelligent experiences at scale. Or, as Sachdeva puts it, “The next wave of engagement will belong to brands that can orchestrate billions of data points into meaningful, emotionally intelligent experiences.”
This Diwali has been more than just a season of lights, it’s proved to be a season of transformation in how brands tell stories. Video has become interactive, personalized, and grounded in culture. AI is the engine, but the driver is still human insight. Bhargava emphasizes, “When AI meets empathy, personalisation stops feeling mechanical. It becomes cultural, contextual, and deeply human.” In India’s festive marketing landscape, the message is clear: creativity still matters, but it now demands data intelligence and video reach. For brands ready to embrace this convergence, the festival of lights may also become a festival of insight and engagement.
