Why Some of India's Biggest Brands Still Invest in TVC

Why Some of India's Biggest Brands Still Invest in TVC

The living room screen has changed shape over the past decade, moving from cable boxes to smart displays and streaming apps. Yet the logic that made the television commercial powerful still holds true for India's largest brands today. Mass reach, emotional storytelling, and inherited trust remain difficult to replicate through any single digital format, and the data backs this up clearly.

Why TVC Still Commands Trust And Scale In India

Living Rooms Still Deliver Unmatched Reach

A well-placed TVC delivers something digital formats often struggle to match, simultaneous, shared attention across an entire household. When families watch together, a single commercial slot reaches multiple decision-makers at once, multiplying its influence without multiplying spend. According to Kantar's Media Compass report, India's monthly connected television audience grew 23 percent year-on-year to reach 166 million viewers in Q1 2026, with more than a third watching content exclusively through connected devices. Smart TVs and regional networks have also pushed deeper into smaller towns and rural households, giving marketers a scale of reach that short-form digital placements rarely achieve on their own.

An Ormax report found connected television penetration in India grew 85 percent in 2025, with the country now home to more than 129 million connected TV users across 45 million households, over half of them in towns under one million population. This is precisely why household names like Colgate and Hamam have relied on television for decades, both sell everyday essentials that nearly every family buys, and only television offers reach at that scale.

Emotional Storytelling Builds Lasting Memory

The most effective TVCs are built like short films rather than sales pitches, using narrative tension, music, and pacing to create moments audiences recognize from their own lives. This is the core discipline behind strong ad film production, where craft matters as much as budget.

This shows up directly in the numbers too. Kantar's Creative Effectiveness research, testing thousands of Indian ads annually, found campaigns scoring high on creative strength achieve a profitability index of 120, against just 88 for weaker executions. Vicks illustrates this well, its long-running "Touch of Care" campaign moved away from cold-and-cough messaging entirely and told real, emotionally resonant family stories instead, a creative risk that paid off in recall far beyond a standard product-benefit ad. Hamam has similarly built decades of trust through values-driven family storytelling rather than product claims. Emotional depth in a TVC isn't a nice-to-have, it's measurably tied to business performance.

How TVC Fits Into Modern Multichannel Marketing

Credibility And Performance Work Together

There's also a quieter, psychological layer at play. Appearing on television, whether during a family serial, a festival broadcast, or a cricket match, still signals stability and seriousness in a way many digital formats haven't earned. This legitimacy compounds over time, reinforcing the long-term positioning at the heart of sound brand strategy for Indian markets. Regional retail brands understand this too, The Chennai Silks has used memorable, jingle-driven TVCs for years to build instant recognition across Tamil Nadu, proving this credibility isn't limited to national FMCG players.

Television and digital advertising work best as partners, not competitors. Television builds broad emotional familiarity while digital channels convert that awareness into clicks and purchases. WPP Media projects India's total ad revenue to grow close to 10 percent in 2026, approaching Rs 2 lakh crore, with connected television's share of professional video spend climbing from roughly 12 percent in 2024 to about 17 percent in 2026. Brands layering digital performance marketing on top of an established TVC presence tend to see stronger engagement, since audiences already recognize and trust the brand before a digital ad reaches them, a pattern that plays out across most integrated brand campaigns.

Audiences And Technology Are Both Evolving

The technology behind television commercial production is also becoming more sophisticated, borrowing precision and interactivity from digital formats while keeping its emotional core intact. Modern smart TVs let brands target specific regions and household segments with far greater accuracy than traditional broadcasts allowed, and interactive elements like scannable codes and clickable overlays are turning passive viewing into direct paths toward purchase.

By WPP Media's estimates, connected television ad revenue in India is projected to grow around 20 percent in 2025 and a further 22 percent in 2026, reaching a combined Rs 6,800 to 8,000 crore across the two years, a strong signal this evolution is being taken seriously.

What This Means For Brands Planning Ahead

Reach without a strong story produces awareness without loyalty. Trust without measurement makes budget hard to justify internally. Whether it's a national name like Colgate, Vicks, or Hamam, or a strong regional player like The Chennai Silks, the brands getting the most value from their TVC treat it as the anchor of a much larger brand solution, where one well-made film shapes the tone for every digital cut, social teaser, and in-store moment that follows. Getting that anchor right takes craft, cultural understanding, and a genuine sense of what makes an audience pause and pay attention, which is the kind of thinking Kuviyam Mediaworks brings to every brand it works with, from its teams in Trichy and Chennai to clients across the world.