Why brands in India are turning to experiential marketing

Consumers today do not just want to see brands; they want to experience them. Across the world, experiential marketing has emerged as one of the fastest-growing pillars of modern brand strategy, with global spending crossing US$130 billion. In a world of fragmented attention and ad fatigue, experiences offer something traditional channels struggle to deliver: undivided attention, emotional engagement and cultural participation.

India is at the forefront of this shift. The country’s live events market is estimated at approximately INR13,000 crore in 2025, reflecting the scale at which experience-led consumption is evolving. Participation is expanding well beyond metros, with over 10 lakh people traveling for live events in the last two years, representing audiences from nearly 1,200 cities across the country.

Cultural and entertainment events are also growing in scale. Navratri spans over 2,000 organized events across cities, while large-format celebrations such as music-led Holi events can attract close to 50,000 attendees. At the same time, the broader entertainment ecosystem continues to demonstrate massive participation; with the Dussehra weekend alone recording 6.8 million movie tickets sold.

Together, these trends signal a clear shift. Experiences are becoming central to how Indian consumers socialize, celebrate culture and express identity, thereby highlighting the importance of experiential marketing in India and the role of live-events marketing is driving this shift

A clear signal from consumers and brands

To understand how brands are responding to this shift, we conducted a survey of CMOs and marketing leaders across industries.

The results point to strong consumer demand for experiential engagement, with 78% of consumers indicating a preference for experiential interactions with brands. In response, 88% of surveyed brands report increasing their experiential marketing spending, reflecting growing leadership confidence in brand-experience strategies.

Brands no longer view experiential marketing as a one-off activation. Instead, brands increasingly expect it to deliver across multiple objectives, including cultural brand relevance, engagement, trial and advocacy.

Overcoming barriers to scale

While momentum is strong, some barriers still exist for brands that have not yet activated experiential marketing meaningfully.

Among these organizations, the most common constraints include a lack of expertise (71%), budget pressures (57%) and uncertainty around measurement and ROI (43%). However, intent remains strong. Nearly 29% of currently inactive brands plan to launch experiential campaigns within the next 12 months.

This highlights the market is at an inflection point, where the barriers to experiential marketing are largely executional rather than strategic.

Turning experiences into measurable impact

To help brands unlock the full potential of experiential marketing, this report introduces a five-step experiential impact pyramid, which serves as a strategic blueprint for designing experiences that create real brand value. The framework guides brands from audience insight and narrative design to participation, immersive phygital integration and long-term cultural ownership.

Complementing this is the 3L (love, loyalty and last engagement) measurement framework, which moves beyond traditional metrics such as impressions and footfall to measure emotional resonance, advocacy and long-term brand memory.

From anticipation to participation

Finally, the report highlights how leading brands engage audiences across the full experiential journey: anticipation, participation and amplification. Pre-event storytelling builds excitement, on-ground interactions create emotional memory and post-event content extends cultural relevance, thereby creating a phygital brand engagement experience.

Together, these stages create a fan-love flywheel, a compounding system in which experiences strengthen brand affinity over time.

As India’s experience economy continues to grow and experiential marketing trends mature, brands that shift from visibility to involvement and from audiences to communities will be best positioned to build lasting relevance and loyalty.