Warranty wars, celebs, and family tales: Paint brands battle for festive mindshare

New Delhi: As the monsoon lifts and households across India turn to pre-Diwali makeovers, the country’s paintmakers are at war. 

In these few weeks, when homes are readied for celebration and families rush to refresh wardrobes and living rooms, the decision to repaint walls becomes a high-stakes choice. 

This year, the fight is playing out across guarantees, celebrity power, and functional promises, amplified by some of the most aggressive media spends in recent memory.

At the heart of the battle is an unusual face-off between the market leader and a young challenger. Birla Opus, the Aditya Birla Group’s paints business, barely a year old, jolted the category with a provocative promise: if its paint fades within twelve months, it will repaint the house for free. 

Dubbed the “Birla Opus Assurance,” the commitment was framed not as marketing puffery but as a hard consumer contract, one that would cover all four seasons, in all weather. 

To deliver the message, the brand leaned on its star duo, Vicky Kaushal and Rashmika Mandanna, supported by Ranvir Shorey, Murali Sharma, Seema Pahwa and Jaaved Jaaferi in quirky interruption-style films thanking architects and contractors for their trust.

For a category where warranties have long existed in the fine print, Birla Opus dragged the promise to the front page. And in doing so, it forced a rare reaction from the Goliath of Indian paints. 

Within weeks, Asian Paints splashed national dailies with a stark reply: “Decades of Trust, Warranty that Lasts.” The line, “The years will change. Our promise won’t”, was as much a counter-offensive as it was reassurance. 

Where Birla was offering one year, Asian reminded consumers that it had been standing by its warranty promises for over 80 years, with terms that now range from four years on smart emulsions to twelve years on luxury finishes. The centrepiece was its new SmartCare Infinia product, backed by an unprecedented 25-year warranty.

Yet warranties are only one front. As in fashion or luxury, aspiration sells. And this season, aspiration has a face: Deepika Padukone, fronting Asian Paints Royale Glitz. 

Shot with high-gloss visuals, the campaign pitches walls not as finishes but as emotional canvases, living surfaces that mirror the homeowner’s sense of style. 

Other players are equally busy weaving their own lanes. Nerolac has turned to Ranveer Singh and its iconic jingle, “Jab ghar ki raunak badhani ho,” to speak to families who may be living under the same roof but behind their screens. The message is about rediscovering the living room as a space of shared joy. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nerolac Paints (@nerolacpaints)

Berger has taken the opposite tack: straightforward functionality. Its Easy Clean campaign, created by Lowe Lintas, depicts a child doodling across walls and a wrongly accused dog, only to have the paint wipe clean in seconds. The payoff: “No Daag. No Tension. Only Beautiful Walls.” 

JK Maxx, another challenger, has gone with a festive family narrative in “Ghar Aane Ke Bahane,” starring Jimmy Shergill and Minissha Lamba, portraying freshly painted homes as warm backdrops for reunions and, not coincidentally, Instagram stories.

Dulux, the brand owned by AkzoNobel India, has opted for humour and balance. Its new campaign, “Lage Shaandaar, Chale Shaandaar,” dramatises a banter about what matters more, the unmatched quality of Dulux or its warranty under the Dulux Assurance programme. The answer: both. First launched in 2021 as a quality promise and expanded into a comprehensive warranty two years later, the scheme has been adopted across metros and small towns alike. Directed by Prasoon Pandey and conceptualised by Lowe Lintas, the film underscores that Dulux won’t ask consumers to compromise.

What makes this season distinct is not only the creativity but also the sheer muscle of the media plans. Paint brands are taking up front-page newspaper spreads, driving warranty narratives on high-reach properties. Digital and connected TV, where brands can marry storytelling with sharper targeting, have taken up a larger share of festive budgets than ever before.

Birla Opus has sought to reset the conversation around warranties with a bold one-year repaint guarantee. Asian Paints has countered with the weight of decades and the lure of Deepika Padukone. Berger and JK Maxx are betting on everyday families and functional promises, while Dulux offers consumers both performance and protection in a single stroke. Nerolac, for its part, is reviving nostalgia while injecting it with Ranveer Singh’s kinetic energy.

For the industry, it is proof that paint, an often under-discussed category in advertising, can still produce sharp creative duels that push incumbents to answer challengers. 

The next few weeks will reveal whether it is the bold guarantees, the multi-decade warranties, the seduction of celebrity or the pragmatism of stain removal that finally tips the brush in one direction.