Marketers weigh human touch over AI as the festive season begins

New Delhi: “AI doesn’t look familiar. Humanness, context, and engagement matter,” said Purvaa Kapadia, Head of Marketing & CRM at Marks and Spencer, during a panel at CLICK 2025, the 11th edition of IAMAI’s affiliate and performance marketing conference. 

Her remarks captured the unease many Indian marketers feel about leaning too heavily on artificial intelligence ahead of this year’s festive ad sprint.

At the same panel, Anjali Dutta, Head of Digital Studio at Tech Mahindra, struck a different note: “We have AI in our hands, and we use it smartly. Creative execution with AI slashed time. However, AI or human, quality is important.”

Festive season marketing in India has always been high-stakes, a period of soaring consumer intent but unforgiving competition. The challenge today is no longer just showing up during Diwali or Raksha Bandhan, but showing up in the right place, at the right time, with the right creativity.

That tension was the focus of one of the most closely watched sessions on Day 1, “Driving Performance and Brand Equity in a Festive Season.” The panel featured Kapadia of Marks and Spencer, Dutta of Tech Mahindra, and Saurav Kumar, Paid Media Lead, Digital Marketing at Merck Group.

The central question: how can brands unlock short-term conversions without sacrificing long-term brand equity?

Kapadia argued that retail fashion demands a human-centred approach. “Retail fashion is competitive, and then we have D2C taking up so much of the consumer base that it spreads things thin. We focus on creativity. For us, AI engagement is low; it looks so pretty and spotless that it doesn’t connect with the audience,” she said.

For Marks and Spencer, festive advertising is about sustaining loyalty, not chasing quick bursts. “We don’t track reach or views; we look at how our customers are engaging with our brand, the connection, and the long-term relationship. Performance and brand relations go hand in hand. We try to build long-term relations so that during seasons like the festive period and in winter, we see conversions,” she added.

In a lighter moment, she quipped, “God must have had a marketer’s mind when creating the calendar, half the year we work on marketing, ads, engagement, and relationships, and the other half we focus on conversions.”

Dutta, however, highlighted AI’s ability to accelerate workflows and sharpen insights. “AI helps us read consumer behaviour, and we can use data to connect and deliver our message. The real power lies in how well we understand humans and their emotions. AI is just a tool, and we are still experimenting with it,” she said, pointing to Cadbury Celebrations’ Raksha Bandhan campaign, which used AI to personalise greetings for millions of consumers, as an example of tech used effectively.

She acknowledged the risk of sameness in AI-generated creative but stressed that impact depends on smart deployment. “While we create photos or videos with AI, it often suffers from a problem of sameness. But my team insists that AI doesn’t have to be the same; it’s about knowing what to use, where to use it, and how to use it. That’s when AI really makes sense,” she explained.

Together, the two voices captured the spectrum of marketing’s AI moment. For Kapadia, overuse of AI risks stripping away the quirks that make campaigns relatable and memorable, especially in fashion, where context and emotion drive loyalty. For Dutta, AI is a powerful enabler when used selectively, saving time and providing insights without replacing human creativity.

As consumer journeys fragment across OTT, e-commerce, social media and traditional platforms, the panel agreed on one point: festive marketing success depends on blending contextual storytelling with precision-driven performance.