Flipkart’s Big Billion Days ad: blockbuster cast, massive hype, but is it enough?

New Delhi: Flipkart’s star-studded Big Billion Days (BBD) campaign has already clocked 117 million views on YouTube, backed by crores in production budgets and celebrity endorsements.

But did they really need such an expensive marketing trick, creating a multiverse of celebs to bring the idea alive? That’s the question raised by Aditi Anand, Head of Marketing at L’Oréal Professional, in a LinkedIn post that has become a flashpoint in industry chatter.

She also highlighted the lack of an online reputation management (ORM) strategy to handle the flood of consumer complaints on the very platform where the brand is spending big.

In her post, Anand examined whether the e-commerce giant needs “expensive marketing tricks” like heavy paid pushes or onboarding a clout of celebrities to bring alive its festive sales proposition in today’s skippable, digital-first ad ecosystem.
“BBD is all about crazy, unbelievable deals. And so, the creative exaggeration to bring the proposition to life makes sense,” she wrote. “But did they really need such an expensive marketing trick, creating a multiverse of celebs to bring the idea alive?”

Watch the ad here:

Flipkart’s 2025 campaign features a blockbuster cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Alia Bhatt, Farah Khan, Mahesh Bhatt, celebrity chef Dilip, boAt co-founder Aman Gupta, Jannat Zubair, Sakshi Shivdasani, viral music creator Yashraj Mukhate and comedian Anubhav Singh Bassi.

Anand underlined the sheer cost behind such a line-up: “Sure, there must be annual deals in place, but their per-day costs still run into crores. Add to that the fact that big celebs demand big production houses and accomplished directors, which again are not cheap. The production budget plus celeb cost for this campaign would easily be in double-digit crores.”

Anchored by a three-minute “theme film” and supported by multiple short edits, the campaign has already crossed 117 million YouTube views. While acknowledging that the shorter edits were “delightful, quirky, and land the point effortlessly,”

Anand felt the long thematic film was unnecessary: “Yes, it lands the message if the full three minutes are consumed, but in my experience, that’s rarely the case. In today’s digital world, most media buys happen on skippable formats.”

She also flagged Flipkart’s ORM miss, “YouTube is flooded with comments on order cancellations, fake products, and poor service, the top one alone has 5,000 likes and 170 replies. And yet no reply from the brand. Silly to not have an ORM strategy for YouTube given the amount of media being put on that platform.”

Her critique drew sharp responses from the marketing fraternity. Some argued that “only in Bollywood” would brands spend crores on star-studded ads instead of making products cheaper, while others warned that if great advertising and service don’t walk together, today’s social media can be quick to gun you down. One marketer summed it up bluntly: “Celebs buy attention. Ideas earn it. The question is, which one sustains trust?” A few likened the campaign to a luxury crossover episode: entertaining, packed with spectacle, but not necessarily efficient.

The discussion strikes at the heart of a long-standing dilemma: while Big Billion Days has historically leaned on celebrity-heavy campaigns to cement its festive dominance, questions persist about whether scale and star power are enough in an age where consumers prize authenticity, quick engagement and responsive brands.