A brand does not always need to interrupt content to get noticed. Sometimes, the smarter approach is to become the content people actually want to watch.
That shift explains why branded content examples in India increasingly go beyond short advertising films. Brands are creating documentaries, entertainment properties, episodic shows, purpose-led storytelling and original digital formats designed around audience interests.
For Brand Heads and Media Heads, the important question is not simply which campaigns worked? It is: what did the brand create that was valuable enough for the audience to spend time with?
Here are four Indian examples that illustrate different approaches to branded content and branded entertainment.
What Is Branded Content?
Branded content is content created or funded by a brand where the audience value comes from the content itself, not just from the advertising message.
The difference from traditional advertising is useful. A TV commercial typically has a product or proposition at its centre. Branded content can put a story, subject, community or entertainment format first, with the brand playing a more integrated role.
That does not mean the brand disappears. The strongest examples connect the content idea to something the brand can credibly own.
1. Asian Paints — Where The Heart Is
Format: Episodic branded show/home and lifestyle content
Asian Paints’ Where The Heart Is is one of the clearest examples of a brand building a repeatable content property around an audience interest.
The format takes viewers inside the homes of public figures and explores their spaces, design choices, memories and personalities. Asian Paints currently describes the series as a journey into homes and the people who have shaped them, and the property has continued across multiple seasons.
The strategic lesson is important: the product does not have to dominate the story for the brand to remain relevant.
The audience comes for access, personalities, interiors and inspiration. The brand earns relevance by consistently occupying the broader territory of home, colour and design.
It is also a useful example of how a brand can turn a campaign into an ongoing content IP rather than starting from zero with every campaign cycle.
What marketers can learn:
If the brand has a credible territory, build a format that can return with new stories, people and episodes.
2. Tata Tea — Jaago Re
Format: Purpose-led brand storytelling
Tata Tea's Jaago Re demonstrates another approach: using a recurring brand platform to connect a product category with a larger cultural conversation.
The initiative began in 2007 and evolved around themes including civic participation, corruption, voting and social awareness. Tata Consumer Products describes Jaago Re as a platform for social awakening rather than simply a conventional product campaign.
The strength of the idea is the connection between the brand and the everyday ritual of tea. The morning cup becomes a natural entry point for the idea of “waking up” to issues around you.
This is different from building an entertainment show, but it is still a valuable branded storytelling example because the brand platform gives multiple pieces of communication a common narrative identity.
What marketers can learn:
A strong content platform can outlast individual campaigns when the central idea is broad enough to evolve but specific enough to remain recognisable.
3. The Dewarists — Dewar’s
Format: Brand-funded music and travel series
The Dewarists is a particularly useful case when discussing branded entertainment examples.
The series combined music documentary and travelogue elements, bringing musicians together in different Indian locations to create original music. The format was associated with Dewar’s and was developed as an entertainment property rather than as a conventional product commercial.
Its significance goes beyond the format itself. The Dewarists won a Bronze Lion at Cannes Lions 2012 in the Branded Content & Entertainment category. Contemporary industry coverage described the show as an example of a brand integrating itself into original entertainment rather than simply placing advertising around existing content.
For marketers, this illustrates what a brand-funded show can achieve when the entertainment idea has a genuine reason to exist.
The music and collaborations were the attraction. The brand became part of the world around that experience.
What marketers can learn:
When the audience interest is strong enough, a brand can build equity by funding a property people choose to consume.
4. Ariel — #ShareTheLoad
Format: Purpose-led campaign and storytelling platform
Ariel's #ShareTheLoad sits closer to advertising than The Dewarists or Where The Heart Is, but it is worth including because it shows how a brand can build an enduring narrative platform around a social conversation. Across multiple editions, the initiative addresses the domestic divide of household chores, creating emotionally resonant storytelling that sparks widespread cultural dialogue while reinforcing brand purpose.
What marketers can learn:
When a brand consistently champions an authentic point of view, purposeful storytelling can drive deep brand affinity across years.