Berger Paints and the Festival Season: Building Cultural Equity Through "Berger Priyo Pujo"

Industry & Competitive Context

The Indian paint and coatings industry is one of the country's most strategically significant consumer-facing sectors. As of 2024, the market was valued at approximately USD 8.85 billion and is projected to reach USD 15.96 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of roughly 8.78% (Jadhavar Business Intelligence, 2024). The decorative paints segment is the dominant revenue driver, constituting approximately 75–80% of total market volumes, and is heavily sensitive to housing construction cycles, consumer sentiment, and — critically — festive seasons, when repainting activity in Indian homes traditionally spikes. The competitive structure of the industry is oligopolistic. Five organised players — Asian Paints, Berger Paints, Kansai Nerolac, Akzo Nobel, and Indigo Paints — together command approximately 90% of the organised market (StockGro, 2024). Asian Paints holds the dominant position, while Berger Paints is the established second-largest player. The entry of Grasim Industries' Birla Opus in September 2023, backed by a ₹10,000 crore capital commitment, significantly altered the competitive calculus for incumbents. According to investor presentations, Birla Opus rapidly gained an approximately 6–10% decorative market share after launch, putting downward pressure on margins across the board and intensifying the importance of brand loyalty and differentiated marketing for all established players. The decorative segment's consumer is also evolving. Urbanisation, rising disposable incomes, and shortening repaint cycles are creating a more aspirationally driven buyer who responds to brand equity, not merely product specifications. For a category where the consumer's purchase decision recurs only once every three to five years on average, sustained brand salience — especially during moments of cultural and emotional relevance — is a structural competitive necessity.

Brand Situation Prior to Campaign

Berger Paints India Limited was incorporated in 1923 and is headquartered in Kolkata, West Bengal. The Dhingra family acquired the company and has since steered it to become the second-largest paint firm in India by revenue and market capitalisation (Business Standard, August 2024). The company's deepest historical and operational roots are in eastern India, particularly West Bengal — a market where Berger has traditionally held disproportionate mind-share and distribution density. Prior to the formalisation of festive-season marketing as a strategic pillar, Berger's advertising, as documented in trade and industry analyses, was weighted towards trade promotion — incentivising dealers, contractors, and distributors — rather than direct consumer engagement. A study of the company's go-to-market posture available on public record indicates that sales promotion schemes during the festival season, especially around Durga Puja in West Bengal and Odisha, included gifts and schemes tied to larger pack sizes. However, this was largely a tactical, trade-facing effort with limited brand-building intent. The broader challenge Berger faced was structural: as second-in-category, it needed to close a significant brand perception gap with Asian Paints — which had built formidable consumer-facing campaigns over decades — without being able to match the market leader's scale on a purely transactional basis. Berger's answer was a culturally embedded, community-centric campaign architecture anchored to the single largest festival in its home geography.

Strategic Objective

The Berger Priyo Pujo campaign, launched in 2012, represented a deliberate shift from transactional festive promotion to cultural brand sponsorship. Its strategic objectives, as evidenced across documented press releases and corporate communications from the company's MD & CEO Abhijit Roy, appear to have been threefold:

First, to transform Berger Paints from a product brand into a cultural institution within Bengal's festive ecosystem — making the brand synonymous with Durga Puja itself, in the same way that the festival is synonymous with colour, renewal, and community.

Second, to generate earned media and community participation at a scale that paid media alone cannot deliver, thereby improving brand salience efficiency.

Third, to deepen emotional associations between the brand and the concept of community, inclusivity, and the transformative power of colour — associations that are directly transferable to the product value proposition (painting spaces, renewing homes, celebrating life transitions).

Campaign Architecture & Execution

Berger Priyo Pujo was launched in 2012 and, by its thirteenth edition in 2025, had established itself as what the brand's own communications call "the only Pujo felicitation contest judged by the people themselves" (bergerpriyopujo.com, 2025; BusinessWire India, 2022). The campaign's architecture evolved significantly over its first decade of operation. The core mechanic involves identifying the Top 10 Durga Pujos across West Bengal through a structured public voting process. Puja committees register their pandals, shortlisted entries are then promoted across radio, press, hoardings, digital, and mall activations — all branded under the Berger Priyo Pujo umbrella — and the top ten winners receive prize money, trophies, and prominent media recognition. Early editions used toll-free number voting (1800-200-4199) and SMS codes, with Radio Mirchi serving as a broadcast partner for featured pandals. The top 10 winning pujos received ₹1 lakh each in prize money (berger-priyo-pujo community documentation, circa 2015). The campaign expanded its category structure over time, recognising three distinct segments: Barowari Pujo (large public committee pujas), Apartment Pujo, and District Pujo — ensuring geographic and demographic breadth that extended the brand's associational reach well beyond Kolkata's city limits. A significant architectural evolution occurred in the 11th edition (2022), when Berger introduced digital voting for the first time, enabling participation via WhatsApp and the campaign's dedicated website — a structural adaptation to changing media consumption patterns, particularly among younger Bengali audiences. The brand also engaged celebrities from the Bengali film fraternity to drive awareness of the digital transition (BusinessWire India, October 2022). Beyond competitive voting, the campaign progressively added participatory sub-contests rooted in traditional Bengal culture. The Alpona Contest (introduced in 2021) invited participants to create traditional Bengali floor art, while the Dhunuchi Naach Contest revived a traditional incense-lamp dance form. Both were framed explicitly by Berger as attempts to "connect contemporary folks to the traditional ways of Durga Pujo celebrations" and to revive "dwindling artforms amongst younger audiences" (BusinessWire India, 2022). A third layer — "Bhinno Chokhe Onno Pujo" (Pujo Through Different Eyes) — was introduced in the campaign's tenth year (2022) and continued in subsequent editions. Described by MD & CEO Abhijit Roy in a press statement as an attempt to "foster inclusivity," this initiative involved Berger Paints visiting old-age homes and orphanages in Kolkata — specifically Apanjan, Anandaghar, and Debangan — painting their walls in festive colours and providing gifts to residents who would otherwise remain excluded from the festival's mainstream celebrations (MediaBrief, October 2022).

Positioning & Consumer Insight

The Berger Priyo Pujo campaign is architecturally grounded in a layered consumer insight. At its most literal level, Durga Puja is the largest and most economically consequential festive period in West Bengal. It is also the period during which home renovation and repainting decisions are most concentrated in the region. Berger's category-level opportunity was therefore clear: be most salient to the consumer during the precise moment they are most likely to decide to repaint. But the more sophisticated insight — which explains the campaign's longevity and cultural embeddedness — is that Durga Puja is not experienced by Bengalis as a consumer event. It is an identity event. The festival represents community cohesion, artistic tradition, pride in Bengal's cultural heritage, and an annual renewal of collective identity. A brand that merely sponsors the festival remains external to it. A brand that becomes a mechanism through which the community participates in and celebrates the festival transcends the sponsor category entirely. Berger's strategic positioning move was, therefore, to transfer decision-making authority to the community. By making the public the judge of which pujos deserve recognition, Berger inserted itself into the emotional infrastructure of the festival — not as an advertiser, but as an enabler. This is a documented application of what marketing theory terms "participatory brand co-creation," executed at a community rather than individual level. The subsequent layering of cultural preservation (Alpona, Dhunuchi Naach) and social inclusion (Bhinno Chokhe Onno Pujo) reinforces a brand archetype of stewardship — a brand that does not merely sell colour but protects, preserves, and extends colour into parts of society that commercial activity typically ignores.

Media & Channel Strategy

Based on publicly available documentation, the Berger Priyo Pujo media strategy has employed a multi-channel activation model that intensifies in the weeks leading up to the festival. Broadcast partnerships are central: Radio Mirchi was documented as a broadcast partner in earlier editions, with shortlisted pujos featured on the station daily during the pre-puja fortnight. Press coverage — in leading Bengali newspapers — has been used for winner announcements and pandal profiling. In the campaign's regional expansion phase, outdoor media (hoardings) and mall activations served as amplifiers across Kolkata and district markets. For the Silk luxury interior paint range, Berger has historically maintained national-level celebrity partnerships. Katrina Kaif was publicly documented as a brand ambassador for Berger Silk, with campaigns deployed across news, movies, sports, and general entertainment channels, as well as in print, radio, digital, theatres, airlines, and trade activations (MoneyWorks4Me, press release documentation). The actress Kareena Kapoor Khan was later featured in a campaign for Berger Silk Glamor (IIDE case study, 2026). For the Dampstop waterproofing range, Akshay Kumar was featured in a campaign conceptualised by Lowe Lintas, released in 2023, that tied into monsoon-season damp awareness (Campaign India, October 2023). The Kerala market saw a documented localisation of strategy: a TVC for WeatherCoat Longlife was built around the folk song "Kantha Njanum Varam," associated with the Thrissur Pooram temple festival — demonstrating Berger's broader playbook of anchoring product communication in regionally specific festival contexts, not just in Bengal (Exchange4Media, January 2018). For Berger Priyo Pujo specifically, digital channels became the primary voting infrastructure from the 11th edition (2022) onward. WhatsApp-based voting represented a structurally important shift, given WhatsApp's near-universal penetration in urban and peri-urban Bengal.

Business & Brand Outcomes

Berger Paints' publicly reported financial and market share trajectory provides the macro context within which the campaign's strategic contribution must be assessed — while acknowledging that attribution of specific business outcomes solely to the Priyo Pujo campaign is not possible from public data. From its own Integrated Annual Report for FY 2024-25, Berger Paints disclosed that its market share increased from 18.9% in FY 2021-22 to 19.3%, then 19.5%, and then to 20.3% in FY 2024-25 — a consistent 0.5–0.6% annual share gain over four years, a trajectory confirmed by MD Abhijit Roy at the company's 100th AGM (Business Standard, August 2024). The same annual report states that the Decorative segment, accounting for 80% of total revenues, registered a year-on-year volume growth of 7.4% and value growth of 1.1% in FY 2024-25. Revenue stood at approximately ₹11,262 crore in FY24, up from ₹10,619 crore in FY23 (Equitymaster, 2024). In FY 2024-25, the company posted PAT growth of 6.2%, with PAT reaching approximately ₹1,182.80 crore (Business India, June 2025). Berger's volume growth of 7.4% in Q4FY25 outperformed peers Asian Paints and Kansai Nerolac, which posted 2–3% growth in the same period, according to a Nomura Research report cited in Business India (June 2025). At a campaign-specific level, the documented evidence of brand entrenchment is qualitative but persistent: Berger Priyo Pujo in its 13th year continues to be described in corporate communications as the company's "most loved campaign of all times" and as "an integral part of Durga Pujo" — language that reflects an institutional, not merely promotional, standing for the campaign.

Strategic Implications

Several strategically generalisable lessons emerge from the Berger Priyo Pujo case, even given the limitations of publicly available evidence.

Cultural entrenchment as competitive moat. In a category where product differentiation is technically difficult and distribution parity is asymptotically approached over time, cultural identity becomes the most durable differentiator. Berger's decision to embed itself in the identity — not merely the occasion — of Durga Puja represents a form of competitive insulation that capital-intensive new entrants such as Birla Opus find difficult to replicate quickly. Brand equity of this type is accreted over years, not purchased.

Community-adjudicated campaigns as earned media engines. By making the public the jury, Berger effectively distributed the campaign's promotional burden to the participants themselves. Each of the thousands of puja committees that registered their pandals had a vested interest in mobilising their community to vote — generating organic word-of-mouth and social media amplification that neither the brand nor its media agency needed to purchase directly. This is a structurally efficient model for brands seeking to expand reach without proportionally expanding media spend.

The sequential layering of campaign depth. Berger Priyo Pujo's evolution from a simple voting contest (2012) to a multi-contest, multi-audience, socially purposive platform (2022 onward) illustrates the compounding logic of long-format brand campaigns. Each layer — Alpona Contest, Dhunuchi Naach, Bhinno Chokhe Onno Pujo — deepens the emotional register without fragmenting the campaign's core identity. This sequential architecture is a model for brands seeking to sustain engagement with an audience across a decade of continuous exposure.

Geographic specificity as national brand-building. The Bengal-centric focus of Priyo Pujo did not confine Berger to a regional identity. Rather, the depth and quality of the cultural engagement in one market created a brand story that became a reputational asset nationally. The campaign also demonstrated internal blueprint logic: the WeatherCoat Kerala TVC and the Dampstop national campaign show that Berger applies analogous cultural-anchoring principles at different geographic and product-level scales.

The limits of festival sponsorship without ownership. The Berger case implicitly cautions against the more common approach of festival sponsorship as logo placement or event underwriting. The distinguishing feature of Priyo Pujo is not that Berger sponsors the festival, but that the brand has created a parallel institution — the Priyo Pujo Awards — that is itself a valued part of the Durga Puja calendar. Brands that merely place logos at festivals remain external to the emotional experience; brands that become mechanisms of the festival's own celebration are remembered differently.

Discussion Questions

1. Brand Architecture and Cultural Equity: Berger Priyo Pujo has been running for thirteen years and is described as the brand's "most loved campaign." At what point does a campaign become a brand institution, and what are the risks and obligations that come with that status? How should Berger manage a hypothetical transition of MD leadership without disrupting the cultural capital accreted by the campaign?

   
   

2. Competitive Response: With Birla Opus entering the market with a ₹10,000 crore investment commitment and stated willingness to absorb losses for three years to gain market share, how should Berger Paints prioritise its marketing investment between defending existing brand equity in Bengal (through campaigns like Priyo Pujo) versus broadening its national consumer base through mass-reach product campaigns? What portfolio-level trade-off framework would you apply?

   
   

3. Attribution and Measurement: Berger's market share has grown from 18.9% to 20.3% over four years, during which Priyo Pujo was an active and expanding campaign. How would you design a measurement framework to determine the causal contribution of the Priyo Pujo campaign to this market share trajectory, given the confounding effects of distribution expansion, raw material price changes, and competitive dynamics?

   
   

4. Scalability of Community-Centric Campaigns: The Priyo Pujo model is deeply embedded in the specific cultural context of Durga Puja and West Bengal. Berger has separately adapted a festival-anchored strategy for Kerala (Thrissur Pooram-linked TVC). What conditions — cultural, market structural, or competitive — must be present for a "community campaign" model to be viable? Can Berger replicate the Priyo Pujo model for Navratri in Gujarat or Onam in Kerala, or are there limits to the transferability of this approach?

   
   

5. Social Purpose as Brand Strategy: The "Bhinno Chokhe Onno Pujo" (Pujo Through Different Eyes) initiative involves Berger painting the walls of old-age homes and orphanages during Durga Puja, explicitly positioning the brand around inclusivity and social purpose. Evaluate the strategic coherence of this sub-initiative relative to the brand's commercial objectives. Does embedding CSR-adjacent activity into a sales-season campaign strengthen or dilute brand credibility? Under what conditions can a for-profit brand credibly occupy the space of social stewardship?