Indian Agencies Face Expanded Creativity Mandate Beyond TVC Era
- 1The advertising industry has evolved from craft-focused creative work to campaigns that deliver measurable business impact and social relevance, as evidenced by changes at global festivals like Cannes Lions in 2026.
- 2Indian agencies now serve as business growth partners, helping brands acquire customers, build communities, and enter new markets beyond traditional commercial production.
- 3The 60-second television commercial supported by print—once sufficient to build national brands in India—no longer represents the full scope of creative expression available to marketers.
- 4McCann India's CEO Dheeraj Sinha, who served as an Indian jury representative at Cannes Lions 2026, confirms creativity now manifests across creator collaborations, podcasts, immersive experiences, and formats that defy traditional advertising categories.
- 5With creators and online communities commanding attention once held by television commercials, audiences engage with relevant stories regardless of format, forcing agencies to expand their strategic and executional capabilities.
As advertising shifts from 60-second spots to creator collabs and immersive experiences, creativity redefines itself.
The Indian advertising industry stands at an inflection point in August 2026. The fundamental question facing agency leaders and brand strategists is no longer about creative excellence alone—it's about whether traditional agency models have kept pace with the explosive expansion of what advertising now encompasses.
From Craft to Commerce: The Measurable Creativity Mandate
Global advertising festivals have recalibrated their evaluation criteria, moving beyond pure creative craft to assess real-world impact. Juries at Cannes Lions 2026 examined not just the originality of ideas but their tangible outcomes: Did the campaign change consumer behaviour? Did it deliver business results? Did it address meaningful social causes? This shift mirrors the broader transformation in how Indian marketers allocate budgets and measure agency performance. The days when a clever tagline and aesthetically pleasing visuals sufficed have given way to an era where creative work must demonstrate clear commercial outcomes.
Dheeraj Sinha, CEO of McCann India and an Indian jury representative at Cannes Lions this year, articulates the transformation succinctly: "There was a time when a brand could be built through a 60-second television commercial on a national channel, supported by print advertising, but that is no longer the reality. Creativity now has many more expressions than advertising alone." For Indian marketers who built their careers on mastering the TVC format, this represents both a liberation and a challenge.
Beyond the 30-Second Slot: Creativity's Expanded Canvas
The role of advertising has fundamentally expanded beyond product promotion. The most effective campaigns in 2026 are those that address real-world problems while simultaneously strengthening a brand's relevance, purpose, and business objectives. This triple mandate—solving problems, building purpose, and driving commerce—requires agencies to think more like business consultants than creative boutiques.
Devarshi Shah, Chief Growth Officer of Only Much Louder (OML), the creator and culture company, observes that "a strong idea no longer needs to end up as a film or a print campaign. It could become a creator collaboration, a podcast, an immersive experience or something that doesn't fit traditional advertising categories at all. Audiences no longer distinguish between these formats; they simply engage with stories that feel relevant."
This format-agnostic approach to creativity carries particular significance for Indian marketers navigating a fragmented media landscape. With over 500 million social media users and rising consumption of regional language content, the traditional hierarchy of media channels has collapsed. A well-executed creator partnership in Tamil Nadu may deliver greater brand impact than a pan-India television campaign.
The Agency as Growth Partner: Redefining Value Delivery
Indian agencies no longer just produce memorable commercials. They increasingly help businesses acquire customers, build communities and loyalty, shape consumer behaviour, enter new markets, and deliver measurable business growth through advertising. This expanded remit requires capabilities that traditional creative agencies often lack: data analytics, performance marketing expertise, community management, and deep platform-specific knowledge across emerging channels.
With creators, influencers, and online communities commanding the attention television commercials once monopolized, the balance of power in media has shifted. Indian brands must now navigate relationships with thousands of micro-influencers, negotiate with platform algorithms, and create content that resonates within niche communities rather than broadcasting one-size-fits-all messages to mass audiences.
The transformation described above represents more than a tactical shift in media planning—it signals a fundamental reordering of how brands create value through communication. Indian agencies that continue to organize themselves around traditional creative departments (films, print, radio) rather than customer journey stages or business outcomes risk becoming irrelevant. The question isn't whether advertising has changed faster than agencies, but whether agency business models have evolved to capture the expanded economic value they now create for clients.
What makes this moment particularly critical for Indian marketing leadership is the simultaneous rise of in-house creative teams, consulting firms entering the advertising space, and platform-native agencies that never operated under traditional models. The next 18 months will likely see continued pressure on traditional agency margins and further unbundling of services that were once sold as integrated packages. Smart agency leaders are already repositioning their firms as business growth partners rather than creative vendors, but the transformation requires investment in new capabilities, talent, and compensation models that align agency incentives with client business outcomes.
Senior marketing professionals must audit their agency partners not on creative awards alone but on their capacity to deliver across the full spectrum of modern marketing requirements: data-informed strategy, platform-native content, creator ecosystem management, community building, and measurable business impact. The agency that excels at traditional craft but lacks performance marketing capabilities, or the digital specialist without brand-building expertise, represents an incomplete solution. The most successful Indian brands in 2026 are those assembling hybrid teams—combining traditional agency creativity with specialized partners across emerging channels—while maintaining strategic coherence across all touchpoints. This orchestration capability, rather than any single creative output, now defines marketing excellence.
This article is an editorial rewrite based on reporting originally published by Forbes India. The original article has been rewritten and contextualised for India's marketing community by The Wise Marketing Desk using AI-assisted editorial tools.
Read original article at Forbes IndiaFound this useful? Share it with your network.
Get India's best marketing news, daily.
Join 5,000+ marketing professionals reading The Wise Marketing.