A month or so ago, I stumbled upon a bizarrely catchy song on Instagram. ‘Slowly Slowly,’ it was called. Nick Jonas was grooving to it with complete sincerity, while the Internet, predictably, had already turned it into Reel fodder. Curiosity did what curiosity always does. I tracked the audio back to its source and found myself inside one of those gloriously chaotic segments from The Great Indian Kapil Show.
Sunil Grover, dressed as Diamond Raja, was conducting absolute chaos in the form of an orchestra, while Priyanka Chopra with her bits made the entire segment oddly entertaining. The song itself was inane—the kind of earworm that makes no sense initially, but somehow refuses to leave your head. And in today’s Internet economy, it’s usually the first sign that something is about to escape television and enter their second life online.
A few weeks later, I saw it again. Only this time, Diamond Raja had wandered into the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Netflix’s ‘Chill Like A Champion’ campaign brought Sunrisers Hyderabad players Ishan Kishan, Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma into the same eccentric universe, recreating the ‘Slowly Slowly’ madness for a cricket audience deep inside meme season. What began as a comedy segment had suddenly transformed into platform marketing, sports entertainment and Internet culture—all at once.
“In a world where audiences are exposed to countless campaigns daily, what cuts through is a nuanced understanding of cultural context and consumer behaviour,” says Vamsi Murthy, Senior Director, Marketing, Netflix India. “Netflix’s The Great Indian Kapil Show has built a remarkable connection across demographics, and characters like Grover’s Diamond Raja have organically become part of everyday conversations.”
"Driven by a powerful cultural insight rather than a standard sponsorship menu, the campaign focused on the often-overlooked insight around cricketers’ downtime during a hectic season and pushed beyond the usual playbook of cricket campaigns, " says Shiv Burman, Founder, Burman Sports. He describes the campaign as a 'a truly clutter-breaking idea.'
Murthy, on the other hand, also explains that the idea behind the campaign was to merge an already established entertainment character with the IPL ecosystem, creating something audiences would not merely watch, but actively participate in. “When done well, campaigns become something people don’t just watch, but quote, share, and remix,” he says. “For a marketer, that shift from promotion to audience interaction is where real engagement and memorability live.”
And maybe that is the real story here. Indian advertising is no longer obsessed with just celebrities. It is increasingly obsessed with characters.
Not polished endorsers standing beside products. Not stars smiling against perfect lighting while a slogan appears at the bottom of the screen. Brands today want personalities that already feel familiar before the advertisement even begins. The loud uncle. The overconfident expert. The sweet-but-chaotic friend. The man who behaves exactly like somebody from your family WhatsApp group. Yes, definitely a short cut, but an effective one.
Which explains why comedians, particularly the extended Kapil Sharma Show universe, are suddenly everywhere in advertising. But interestingly, not always Kapil Sharma himself.
Over the past few months, Grover has appeared across campaigns not as ‘Sunil Grover, the celebrity,’ but as fully formed personalities. In one campaign, he becomes Dampinder for Asian Paints. For Adobe Express, Grover plays an astrologer, alongside Sahiba Bali and stand-up comic Kullu. GoIbibo, meanwhile, turns travel planning into a mini sitcom with Grover sharing screen space with Kiku Sharda and Rishab Pant. Across most of these campaigns, catchy songs, exaggerated personalities and ensemble chaos remain common ingredients, but the central hook almost always circles back to Grover himself.
This might feel recent, but advertising has flirted with character-led storytelling long before Reels and memes entered the picture. “It’s not really a very new concept,” says Sanmesh Sapkal, Director - Key Accounts, TheSmallBigIdea. “Coca-Cola did it in the ’90s by integrating film characters into advertising. Even now, brands understand that audiences relate more deeply to characters from films or shows because they feel both aspirational and familiar.”
Even recently, Sapkal notes, brands have leaned towards recognisable. Rungta Steel’s campaigns with Gangubai, Jordan and Raees focused more on character recall than actor recognition, while familiar side-character faces like Rakesh Bedi from Dhurandhar are finding renewed relevance because audiences already connect them with a certain comic familiarity and behavioural nostalgia.
The difference today is not the existence of characters. It is the environment they now operate in. Modern advertising is competing against doomscrolling, memes, podcasts, IPL edits, fan pages and creator content—all on the same screen. In that environment, a perfectly polished ad often feels like an interruption. A character, however, feels native to the feed.
“It is pretty simple: we have all developed a biological reflex to ignore anything that feels like a pitch,” says Ritika Jaiswal, Vice President - Client Servicing, popkorn. “The second we see an ad that is too perfect or hear that fake narrative voice, we have already scrolled past.”
According to Jaiswal, characters help brands bypass the resistance audiences have developed towards overt advertising. “When we use a character, it does not feel like a pitch. It feels like a comedy sketch,” she explains. “It is then not a celebrity endorsement but a person you already like in a funny role.”
That distinction matters because the Internet rewards familiarity differently now. One does not wonder what a celebrity is doing after the ad ends, but with a character, there is a story. People actually know the story and wait to see the next episode.
This concept: ‘advertising as episodic entertainment’ is becoming central to brand communication for a few years now. Campaigns are no longer built only for television spots. They are expected to generate memes, clips, remixes, screenshots and reactions. One strong character can travel across formats far more effectively than a static endorsement.
“One good character today is basically a content factory,” says Rashid Ahmed, Consulting CDO, Digital102. Compared to traditional celebrity-led campaigns, Ahmed believes character-driven advertising offers far greater flexibility and scalability, especially in a digital environment where audiences constantly remix, reinterpret and circulate content across platforms.
He also points out that Grover’s humour feels ‘highly meme-compatible without looking overly manufactured,’ which fits naturally into the current digital advertising ecosystem. “Sharma is a superstar. Grover is a shapeshifter,” he adds. “Sharma often brings ‘Kapil Sharma energy’ into a campaign, while Grover disappears into the role itself, becoming the story.”
That observation opens up perhaps the most fascinating layer of this trend. Because if visibility alone determines advertising demand, Sharma should logically dominate this space. After all, the show carries his name. And he has been one of the most successful comedians in India. His audience pull remains massive and his recognisability cuts across demographics. Yet when brands want highly performative, character-heavy storytelling, they often lean towards the ensemble around him.
For instance, Sharda has appeared in a few campaigns, including the recent GoIbibo ad alongside Grover. A few months ago, both Sharda and Krushna Abhishek were also seen fronting Parle Krackjack’s ‘Sweet and Salty’ campaign, where the humour relied more on exaggerated personalities and character dynamics than straightforward celebrity endorsement.
Part of the reason may come down to flexibility. Siddhartha Singh, CEO & Managing Partner, Infectious Advertising, while referring to Grover said, “He brings elasticity as a performer. He disappears into characters rather than carrying a fixed celebrity persona into every brand. That gives marketers greater creative freedom.” Singh points out that recurring personas also create stronger memory structures over time compared to one-off celebrity appearances. “When audiences start anticipating how a character will behave or react, engagement becomes habitual rather than transactional,” he reflects.
Advertising history already has enough proof of this. The Vodafone ZooZoos outlived multiple campaigns. The Amul Girl continues to comment on culture decades later. Even Cadbury’s ‘Shubh Aarambh’ world eventually became bigger than the individual faces attached to it.
In many ways, brands today are trying to recreate that same long-term familiarity. Only faster, louder and in meme format. “No one sends a slick corporate ad to their family group,” says Jaiswal. “But they will send a funny clip of a character they love.”
And perhaps that explains why character-led advertising feels so dominant right now. Not because audiences suddenly fell in love with ads again, but because brands have started disguising advertisements as something else entirely: entertainment that understands Internet behaviour.
