India: Advertising, Marketing & Branding

Examination of Supreme Court’s ruling that appointments violating recruitment advertisement terms constitute fraud on public, reinforcing Article 16 equality in public employment.

Generative AI can now assist with campaign concepts, generate images and videos, alter backgrounds and styling, create advertising copy, and produce market-specific versions of a campaign at remarkable speed. For fashion brands operating across multiple markets, the commercial attraction is obvious: more content, faster production and greater localization

Hanuman Ansh, produced for just 2 crore rupees, has now made over 250 crore. And there is a legal reason it could tell this story so cheaply. The first is a marketing miracle. The second is a quiet point of law. Let me take both. It is a devotional drama about Neem Karoli Baba, made by a first-time filmmaker, Vishal Chaturvedi, from his own book. It opened on August 7 to a day-one collection of just ten lakh. Almost nobody knew it existed.

The intersection of trademark law and digital advertising has long been a contested frontier. One of its most persistent flashpoints concerns the practice of keyword advertising, where a business pays a search engine to display its advertisement when a user searches for a competitor’s brand name. In a significant ruling, the Delhi High Court, in Hindware Ltd. v. Grohe India Pvt. Ltd. & Ors., has provided what is, to date, India’s most definitive judicial answer to the question: does selling a registered trademark as a search keyword amount to trademark infringement, and can the search engine itself be held liable?

The 2026 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is scheduled to be held from June 11 to July 19, 2026, and with the advent of any major sporting event, the online piracy sites also mushroom around the same time.

India's food safety regulator has challenged Diageo's Royal Challenge whisky labeling, questioning claims about maturation in American oak casks and the presence of imported Scotch. The FSSAI's enforcement action raises critical questions about how alcoholic beverage manufacturers substantiate age claims, ingredient disclosures, and product characteristics under India's evolving regulatory framework.

The High Court of Delhi, through its judgment dated 19.06.2026 in M/s EG Communications Pvt. Ltd. & Ors. v. Election Commission of India & Ors. , dismissed a challenge to the directions prohibiting political advertisements at Delhi Metro stations during the operation of the Model Code of Conduct (“MCC”) on the ground that it is not violative of Articles 14 and 19 of the Constitution of India, 1949 (“Constitution”).

The rapid growth of short-form content has transformed social media marketing in India. Platforms such as Instagram have become indispensable tools for brands seeking consumer engagement through reels, influencer campaigns and promotional videos. As per 2025 data, almost 80 percent of marketing professionals integrated Facebook and Instagram into their digital marketing campaigns.

On July 24, 2025, India and the United Kingdom signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) also known as the India - UK Free Trade Agreement (“FTA”).