What’s the creative mood like this IPL season?

For all its star power and stadium noise, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has always been more than just cricket. It’s India’s biggest advertising stage, where brands battle for attention, recall, and most of all, a bubble pop in the group chat that goes, “Did you see that ad?”

In recent years, something shifted. The ads started feeling templatised. The shine of the IPL dulled. And the fans, who once looked forward to the ad breaks, began reaching for the skip button instead.

But IPL 2025 feels different.

This year, creative folks feel that ads don't feel templatised. They do see fresher ideas that are more in tune with what audiences actually want to see. 

A shift in brand tonality

A lot of this reset can be traced to what’s happening on the field. 2025 marks the first post-super-auction season, and with team rosters completely reshuffled, the entire ecosystem has had to rethink its storytelling.

Varun Anchan, ECD at Lowe Lintas, points to this as a major reason for the shift in tonality. 

“2025 feels like a clean slate. With the super auction shaking up team rosters, there’s an undercurrent of freshness, irreverence, and new energy that’s dictating tone across the board,” he says. 

Brands are embracing wit, self-deprecation, and a layered approach that goes beyond just star power and 20-second ads. 

Humour is working this season, but not in the traditional gag format that audiences are so used to. Lay’s, for instance, is taking the long-running ‘air in the packet’ joke and turning it into a product promise, 'Lay’s mein Sabse Zyada Chips'. The humour lands because it’s timely and familiar to the audience. 

Brands are also moving beyond just the usual cricket themes. They’re bringing in fresh stories that haven’t traditionally been part of the IPL space. For example, Swiss Beauty used dramatic, cricket-style commentary to narrate a makeup tutorial, tying it into their campaign line, ‘Swiss Beauty hai har bride ka beauty stroke’.

Anchan adds, “There’s a definite shift in tone and craft. Across advertising, there’s more appetite for authenticity, smart humour, and storytelling that respects the audience’s intelligence.”

He notes that some of the briefs this year range from AR-led fan experiences to scrappy, real-time content.

Regional stories get more visibility 

But simply being funny isn’t enough anymore. 

“Even if you’re not participating in the IPL as an advertiser, you can participate through conversations, strategic partnerships, and collaborations. And because every brand has something or the other to say, it is very important for every IPL brief to have a sense of singularity in ambition,” says Nandan Majumdar, Senior Strategy Director at DDB Mudra.

The idea isn’t just to entertain, it’s to stand out. 

One of the more noticeable changes this year is how brands are approaching regional appeal. For years, regionalisation meant the same script dubbed in five languages. Now, it’s more layered.

Maaza’s new spot, while mostly in Hindi, blends visual cues from multiple Indian states to depict small, celebratory moments where the drink fits in.

Swiggy, too, is opting out of traditional IPL inventory and going all in on hyperlocal memes. Their Instagram feed is full of content that’s rooted in pop culture, local humour, and city-specific fandoms.

Netflix India’s ad featuring Tamil actor Vijay cleverly used a reference from his recent movie, The GOAT. The film’s title, which stands for "The Greatest of All Time," was used to draw a fun comparison between Vijay and M.S. Dhoni. Packed with action, the ad played on this cultural connection to grab attention and entertain fans.

IPL ads that really land don’t just buy attention. They create a moment. And that’s what more brands are chasing this year, cultural relevance, not just media presence.

Neeraj Kanitkar, Co-founder & ECD at Fundamental, explains this further. He says, “First is the ‘mahaul-building’… But the sort of work that comes naturally to us is the kind that starts taking over the second stage of the IPL once the hype has died down a little.”

Can the golden era come back? 

As Kanitkar points out, the ads we remember, CRED, Dream11, and Vodafone, don't just ride the IPL wave; they become a part of its culture. “[They] always have a life of their own,” he says. 

And that’s exactly what more brands seem to be chasing this season: not just momentary attention, but enduring recall.

There’s a quiet longing for the kind of IPL ads that once became cultural phenomena. Ask any creative, and they’ll wax nostalgic about ZooZoos, “Manoranjan Ka Baap,” or Rahul Dravid’s angry meltdown in “Indiranagar Ka Gunda.”

Nandan Majumdar calls the Vodafone ZooZoos his all-time favourite. He says, “[These ads] remind you of how memorable advertising can happen even without any of the typical IPL crutches… celebrities, dialogues, cricket puns.” 

It’s not just about simpler times. It is about big ideas, clearly told. And those ideas still work.

Anchan says, “To bring back the golden era, we don’t need bigger productions — we need sharper thinking, risk-taking, and the guts to follow through with an idea.”

His favourite campaigns have both elements, chaos and creativity. “Manoranjan Ka Baap nailed the tone and swagger of a brand-new league. And Indiranagar Ka Gunda was a masterclass in disruption — an unhinged Rahul Dravid broke the internet because nobody saw it coming. That’s the sweet spot,” he says. 

Kanitkar mentions that many of the campaigns we now consider ‘iconic’ didn’t solely live on TV.

He adds, “CRED, Dream11… they always have a life of their own outside the IPL broadcast. The 20-seconders are just the entry point. The non-broadcast stuff — long-format films, memes, shareable content — that’s what builds memory.”

The golden campaigns at the beginning of IPL’s era weren’t built to fill ad breaks. They were designed to spark conversation.

In the last few years, IPL ads have failed to gain recall, except for a few good ones that we discussed earlier. This season, the ad industry feels ads are picking up momentum, creativity is shining through the cracks, and ads are chasing meaning. It’s not perfect, and not every ad will be remembered. But maybe this subtle shift in tonality and ideas is how the golden era of IPL ads will return and become dinner conversations where a daughter will ask her father, ‘did you see that ad?’ 

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