How does an Italian chocolate brand travel more than 6,000 kilometres to become synonymous with Diwali festival gifting tradition?
With barely changing the product, it was Ferrero Rocher’s marketing that made the difference to become the gifting choice of more than 1.4 billion people in India.
The numbers tell the story:
- Close to 40% of Ferrero Rocher’s India sales happen around Diwali alone. This is 40 to 50% above a normal month
- Nearly one million stores across India now carry Ferrero products.
- Faster than the category: Ferrero says Rocher has outgrown India’s chocolate market in recent years.
Building India’s premium chocolate segment almost from scratch, in a market Cadbury has led for decades, was no accident: it was the result of years of deliberate, disciplined and strategic cultural marketing.
Ferrero’s 2025 Diwali campaign, “Add Your Golden Touch,” demonstrates how the brand approaches cultural marketing through a fully integrated, 360-degree strategy built around five key pillars. Rather than relying on a standalone Diwali advertisement, Ferrero delivers a coordinated, multi-layered campaign that connects with consumers across multiple touchpoints, reinforcing its brand message throughout the customer journey and creating opportunities for engagement, consideration and purchase.
- Celebrity brand association: a long-term Bollywood ambassador, Hrithik Roshan, cast as the host of the family Diwali rather than a one-off endorser, and carried across the brand’s full festive calendar.
- Gamified on-pack activation: a QR code on every praline that turns each purchase into participation.
- Incentive-led promotion: gold vouchers, 96-piece Pyramid packs and gold-plated champagne glasses, prizes chosen to reinforce the brand’s gold equity.
- Participatory and influencer-led content: DIY décor ideas created with influencers, plus branded greeting stickers and social filters that build the brand into how families celebrate and share.
- Omnichannel distribution and media: TV and outdoor, digital and social, quick commerce, and point-of-sale presence in the sweet shops where Diwali gifts are bought.
Here is how each pillar works.
Sources: SocialSamosa, 2026; Storyboard18, 2026; Agro & Food Processing, 2026; Business Standard, 2026; BusinessToday, 2013; BusinessToday, 2014
Inside “Add Your Golden Touch”: The Five Pillars of Ferrero Rocher’s Diwali Strategy
1. Brand Association: A Star Who Lives the Ritual
Hrithik Roshan, one of Bollywood’s biggest names, has fronted Ferrero Rocher’s Diwali campaigns since 2022. The 2025 film follows his Diwali from a morning greeting at the gate to an evening gathering with family, with Ferrero Rocher in every scene.
But this is more than an endorsement. Ferrero has built the brand into the actor’s own family story. The 2022 campaign was framed around the Roshan family’s love for Rocher, and the newest campaign runs on the line “Roshans love Rocher”. Ferrero’s marketing head says the actor buys Rocher for his own celebrations. It helps that Roshan is a name that means light, at the festival of lights.
The partnership also runs well beyond Diwali, across Raksha Bandhan, Christmas and Valentine’s Day, so the association is reinforced all year.
The value of a celebrity partnership lies in continuity and context. A multi-year ambassador, shown inside the consumer’s own rituals, builds brand memory that a single-season endorsement rarely achieves.
Sources: MediaBrief, 2025; exchange4media, 2022; Storyboard18, 2026
2. Connectivity: Giving People Ways to Bring the Brand Into Their Diwali
Ferrero doesn’t just tell people Rocher belongs to Diwali. It gives them things to do with it.
- DIY décor: in 2019, Ferrero worked with social media influencers to share DIY Diwali ideas under three themes: hosting, gifting and décor.
- Greetings: the same year, it released festive Facebook filters and WhatsApp stickers so people could send Diwali wishes with a Ferrero Rocher touch.
- Decorations in the pack: back in 2016, special T24 packs included golden lantern decorations people could assemble at home, with a Facebook contest for sharing them.
- Real rituals on screen: the 2025 film mirrors how families actually celebrate, through greetings, visits and gatherings.
Sources: exchange4media, 2019; Media Infoline, 2016
3. Excitement and Incentive: Every Praline Is a Chance to Win
In 2025, every Ferrero Rocher carried a QR code. Scanning it unlocked a chance to win limited-edition gold-plated champagne glasses, 96-piece Ferrero Rocher Pyramid packs, or gold vouchers worth ₹9,999.
Three things make this smarter than a standard sweepstake:
- The prizes are the brand. Gold, and the Pyramid, Rocher’s hero gifting pack. Every prize reinforces the golden positioning.
- The promotion lives on the product. There is no separate entry mechanic to market. The pack itself is the media, and every box gifted carries the campaign into another home.
- It builds on a track record. The 2023 campaign gave away 100 Pyramids, and in 2016 shoppers could win a trip to Italy, the home of Ferrero Rocher.
Putting the promotion on the pack turns Ferrero’s distribution into a media channel. Every box on a shelf, and every box handed over as a gift, carries the call to action, with no separate entry mechanic to fund.
Sources: MediaBrief, 2025; afaqs!, 2023
4. Media: Present Wherever the Diwali Purchase Happens
“Add Your Golden Touch” was a true 360-degree rollout, planned around the full Diwali buying journey rather than reach alone:
- Broadcast and digital: a TV commercial, a YouTube and social media rollout, and billboards featuring Hrithik Roshan across Mumbai and Delhi.
- Commerce: Ferrero now has a dedicated quick-commerce budget aimed at instant purchase. It runs paid campaigns with Meta and the quick-delivery apps Blinkit and Zepto, using display ads, 15–20 second videos, promotions and pop-up notifications. On Blinkit, it also sold an exclusive Diwali box with a golden candle that lights up when opened.
- Retail: Ferrero builds distribution around chilled display units in sweet shops, putting Rocher exactly where families already buy their Diwali mithai (Indian sweets or confectionery).
Creative: Add the video gif from here
Caption: Blinkit Diwali Experience Box
Sources: Impact, 2025; SocialSamosa, 2025; afaqs!, 2026; Storyboard18, 2026
5. Great Creative: Gold as the Bridge Between Brand and Festival
Ferrero Rocher’s single most valuable asset is its gold. And Diwali is the festival of lights.
Ferrero has spent years building one consistent creative language that joins the two:
- 2019: #GiftAGoldenDiwali
- 2022: #GoldenDiwali
- 2023: #LightupyourDiwali
- 2025: Add Your Golden Touch
Ferrero Rocher’s product design also plays an important role in helping the brand connect with Indian consumers. In 2014, a retailer observed that Ferrero Rocher’s round shape and distinctive gold wrapping resemble a laddoo, a traditional Indian sweet commonly shared and gifted during festivals such as Diwali. This visual similarity may have helped make the product feel more familiar and culturally relevant to Indian consumers, including those living outside major cities.
What makes Ferrero’s approach particularly effective is that the creative concept can extend beyond a single cultural occasion. The brand continued using its “Add Your Golden Touch” platform in a year-end celebration campaign in December 2025 and a Valentine’s Day campaign in February 2026. The concept has also been applied internationally. When Ferrero brought the same platform to European airports in 2024, sales in Madrid reportedly almost doubled compared with the same month in the previous year.
The broader marketing lesson is that effective cultural marketing does not necessarily require brands to adopt traditional symbols or create entirely new identities for each celebration. Instead, it involves understanding the cultural significance of an occasion and identifying where the brand’s existing characteristics naturally align with consumers’ traditions, values and behaviours.
Sources: exchange4media, 2019; exchange4media, 2022; exchange4media, 2023; BusinessToday, 2014; exchange4media, Dec 2025; exchange4media, Feb 2026; DFNI, 2025
From Chocolate to Cultural Symbol
Ferrero didn’t try to invent a new festive behaviour. It walked into one of India’s most deeply held traditions, the giving of gifts at Diwali, and earned its place inside it, campaign after campaign, year after year, until a gold-wrapped praline became part of how Indian families say “you matter” at the festival of lights.
Through consistent marketing efforts over several years, the brand has reinforced Ferrero Rocher as a premium gifting option for Diwali. Its distinctive gold packaging, elegant presentation and association with sharing and celebration have helped it establish a connection with the festive occasion. By repeatedly communicating this message across campaigns, Ferrero has worked to make its chocolates a familiar and relevant choice for consumers looking to express appreciation through gifts.
This cultural relevance also extends beyond India. As Indian communities celebrate Diwali around the world, the traditions associated with the festival travel with them. For example, some Australian gift retailers that also accept orders from New Zealand offer Diwali hampers combining traditional items, such as clay diyas (small oil lamps used during Diwali), with Ferrero Rocher chocolates. This illustrates how a global brand can become part of culturally significant gifting occasions without replacing the traditional elements of the celebration.
Source: Rakhi.com Diwali diya hampers
What This Means for Brands in Aotearoa
At the 2023 Census, 861,576 people, or 17.3% of New Zealand’s population, identified with at least one Asian ethnicity. Stats NZ now projects that around one in three New Zealanders could identify with Asian ethnicities by 2048, with Indian ethnicities rising from about 7% of the population to around 12%.
That makes Diwali a commercially significant cultural moment in New Zealand. Yet too many brands still treat it as a social post and a greeting.
Ferrero’s playbook points to six implications for senior marketers here:
- Earn a role before you buy media. Ferrero’s campaigns work because Rocher already had a job to do at Diwali: being the gift. Define your product’s role in the ritual first; the creative follows.
- Integrate, don’t decorate. Celebrity, participation, incentive, media and creative were planned as one system, signed off months in advance. A diya on a banner and a translated EDM is not a Diwali strategy.
- Put the campaign where the purchase happens. On-pack QR codes, coolers in sweet shops, quick-delivery apps. Map where Indian communities in New Zealand actually shop for Diwali gifts, and show up there.
- Choose voices the community already trusts. Few New Zealand brands have a Bollywood budget. Few need one. Community creators and trusted local voices can do the same job at a fraction of the cost.
- Commit for the future, not a season. Ferrero’s golden Diwali language has run since at least 2016. One-off cultural activations rarely build lasting brand memory.
- Don’t copy and paste India. Even in India, Ferrero activates regional festivals such as Onam, Vishu and Durga Puja, as well as Eid. Indian communities in Aotearoa are just as diverse in region, language, tradition and generation.
Sources: Stats NZ, 2023 Census; Stats NZ, National ethnic population projections 2023(base)–2048; SocialSamosa, 2026
In Conclusion
Ferrero Rocher didn’t decorate a campaign for Diwali. It built a brand that belongs in Diwali. It did it with a clear role, a fully integrated programme and the patience to show up every year. And for New Zealand brands willing to do the same, the opportunity is wide open.
Happy Diwali!
Planning your next Diwali or cultural campaign? Talk to Marketing Minds about building a role for your brand that your audience will recognise year after year.
