As Delhi chokes, brands juggle demand and ethics in pollution season

New Delhi: Delhi-NCR’s air has turned into an annual alarm bell, and winter 2025 is no exception. AQI readings have swung so deep into the hazardous zone that most residents now begin their day by checking the pollution level before the weather forecast.

The capital’s pollution season has become a predictable second monsoon, just dustier, harsher, and far more profitable for some product categories.

And that is where the tension begins.

For consumer brands in respiratory care, immunity, and air purification, pollution is not just a public health emergency; it is also a business season. Every year, as pollution peaks, brands move swiftly. Ads appear, digital spending rises, stock availability is adjusted, and websites start highlighting new claims.

The surge in demand each year forces marketers into an ethical balancing act, which raises a pressing question: how do you stay useful without appearing to cash in on a crisis?

Brands cannot sit out the season anymore

For Dabur, the pollution wave has already reshaped how the company plans product messaging in northern India. Amit Garg, Marketing Head (Health Supplements), Dabur India, said the season has made respiratory health and immunity “a year-round priority rather than just a winter focus.”

The shift is not just in timing. It is also in tonality. Garg said that communication during air emergencies “must first serve the public good before promoting a product.”

He elaborated, saying, “The line between helpful communication and marketing during a public health crisis like Delhi's pollution season rests on the principle of ethical relevance. A brand's communication shifts from helpful to exploitative if it overpromises health benefits or suggests its product is a substitute for official precautions like N95 masks, air purifiers, or policy changes.”

This approach reflects what many brands now face: a hypersensitive audience that may need help but also has little patience for opportunistic packaging of that help.

When AQI rises, search climbs

While marketers debate the ethics of communication, consumer behaviour remains brutally data-driven. When pollution spikes, people panic-buy solutions online.

Dabur sees this every year, with Garg noting a “direct correlation between worsening AQI and a surge in online search and purchase.” As a result, digital and e-commerce spending rise sharply during such spikes, not because brands want to push harder, but because consumers move first.

“The high pollution phase in North India significantly elevates our e-commerce and digital advertising spend due to the immediate, context-driven consumer need for immunity and respiratory wellness solutions. We see a direct correlation between worsening AQI and a surge in online search and purchase of ayurvedic products, which especially help in building immunity, making digital channels highly effective for moment marketing and immediate fulfilment,” Garg told BestMediaInfo.com .

This real-time demand response has turned pollution into not just another seasonal moment but a measurable, trackable retail event, much like festivals or the flu season elsewhere.

Brands also face a new expectation

Delhi’s annual smog has forced brands to expand their responsibility. Many now feel that simply selling a decongestant, syrup, or purifier is not enough; there is pressure to demonstrate environmental contribution.

Respiratory brands like Otrivin position themselves around symptom relief while also investing in projects that attempt to improve green cover and urban air. The communication tone is understated, but the message is clear: consumers increasingly want brands not just to participate in pollution but to fight it.

Commenting on the strategy, Pavan Wani, Category Lead, Pain and Respiratory Health, Haleon ISC, said, “Our approach during high-pollution seasons is rooted in responsibility, educating consumers to combat nasal congestion caused by poor air quality. While we cannot control air pollution, we can help manage the subsequent symptoms and their impact on respiratory health.”

He added, “Representing Otrivin’s ‘Breathe Clean’ initiative, Haleon currently runs two urban forests, developed using the Japanese Miyawaki technique. We are redefining sustainability and green cover efforts while addressing a pressing public health issue.”

Don’t confuse visibility with virtue

Harish Bijoor offered a sharply different view on how brands should behave when Delhi’s air turns hazardous. To him, the ethical line is not just about what brands say, but whether they should be speaking loudly at all.

He argued that when the public is gasping, aggressive visibility doesn’t look like service; it looks like exploitation. Bijoor believes the most responsible thing brands can sometimes do is step back, make their products available, and resist the urge to flood every screen and hoarding.

“A great thing to do would be to just make your offerings available and not advertise them with aggression. Even if you do advertise, I do believe it should be sensitivity-oriented advertising rather than aggression-oriented,” said Bijoor.

He added, “When an emergency becomes a marketing opportunity, the marketer must step back and act benignly, behave benignly, and be really benign. Advertising is not to be indulged in at such a time.”

He also offered an eccentric viewpoint while speaking to BestMediaInfo.com on this issue. He stressed that the pollution season has created a split in the marketing landscape. This split is visible between brands that treat the effects of pollution and those working to prevent pollution in the first place.

The former, he argued, dominates the conversation and advertising money, while the latter struggles for attention. Bijoor pointed out that companies selling relief and treatment often drown out quieter players working on clean-energy solutions or emission-control technologies. To him, this is the core imbalance. Marketing follows where the consumer spends, not necessarily where social need is highest.

‘Marketing is not the villain here’

On the other side of the market equation sit advertising agencies, which reject the idea that communicating during pollution spikes is inherently unethical.

Niti Kumar, Chief Executive Officer of Spark Foundry, said timing is not a moral dilemma; it is the job. “Marketing works on staying top-of-mind and communicating at the right time,” she said. If a product helps consumers in the moment, she argued, there is nothing wrong with ensuring they know about it.

Kumar also believes that the definition of “opportunistic” is being misapplied. “I wouldn’t call it opportunistic unless a brand is being truly insensitive,” she told BestMediaInfo.com .

In her experience, large brands are already extremely careful with tone and message. Explaining the planning of communication strategies for such brands, she stated, “Guidance on communication happens on both message and timing. Pollution has now become predictable. It follows the calendar.

Diwali happens, pollution spikes, and it stays for a specific period. So yes, timing is discussed. Messaging is always collaborative. Large MNCs understand that communication must be extremely sensitive, and they are. Sometimes there is a ready piece of communication from the previous year that worked; sometimes we customise based on something unique in the product or situation.”

Pricing remains flat, but messaging has nerves

Interestingly, despite intense season-driven demand, pricing does not fluctuate much. Agencies generally stay out of pricing decisions, and there is little evidence that brands increase accessibility measures or run major price support drives when demand peaks.

What has changed, however, is the messaging guardrail. Almost every brand now crafts communication with heightened caution, not because regulations demand it, but because consumers do.

Delhi’s audience, fatigued by annual smog and official inaction, has developed a fine sense for tone. Any suggestion of fear-mongering or opportunism can backfire instantly.

That is why, Dabur’s Garg said, the brand's future communication will hinge on “sensitivity, education and credibility,” especially as pollution peaks become recurring events.

A recurring season in every sense

Pollution has now become something Indian marketers quietly accept as a cyclical reality. Like allergy season in the West, Delhi pollution is a calendar feature, only grimmer.

This predictability creates a moral dilemma: if pollution becomes advertising season, does the market start treating it like just another revenue opportunity?

Bijoor clearly worries about that, saying consumers are far more aware and unforgiving than brands assume. People may suffer through the air, but they are sharp enough to judge the intention behind messaging.

Kumar, however, injects realism into the debate: marketers are not responsible for fixing Delhi’s air. “This is fundamentally a government problem,” she said. Brands can only provide relief based on the limited role they play. Expecting a decongestant brand to fix crop burning is dramatically unrealistic.

She further noted, “This is not as simple as planting a few trees. It needs a long-term geopolitical solution involving multiple states, crop burning, firecrackers, and many other layers. It’s difficult for anyone to claim they can fix it.”

Brands now face a new KPI

Delhi’s smog has created a new communication challenge without an easy formula. If brands speak up too early, they risk sounding predatory. If they stay silent, they may seem absent in consumers’ moments of need.

Navigating this tension is becoming a decisive test of marketing maturity in one of India’s largest consumption markets. The city’s pollution crisis has turned into a litmus test for tonality, empathy, consumer intelligence, and brand self-awareness.