MAM
This Valentine’s Day, Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk urges consumers to go beyond their limits
MUMBAI: Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk and Valentine's Day have a strong relationship going for almost a decade. CDM Silk has, over the years, helped many young and old to communicate their true feelings to their significant other with the very simple "Say it with Silk" approach during Valentine's Day.
Having journeyed with the consumers, making each Valentine’s Day special, it was time for the brand to move the love game a notch up. "How far will you go for love?" was conceived to nudge Gen Z to try and go beyond the usual and make it special for their partner this Valentines.
This year’s Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk Valentine's Day campaign has at its heart a video along with high impact outdoors, digital and in-store promotions, etc.
Commenting on the strategy for this Valentine’s Day, Mondelez India director marketing chocolates Anil Viswanathan: “We have received great admiration with the Pop Your Heart campaign over the couple of years and we are thrilled to take it into its third year. As leaders of the chocolate category in India, we attempt to identify new occasions and offer innovative ways for customers to convey their emotion with our products. These simple yet impactful ways help us to stay connected with our consumers. We hope our new heartwarming film and other exciting bundle on eCommerce will urge our consumers to go beyond their limits, for their loved ones, this Valentine’s Day.”
According to Ogilvy India senior executive creative director Zenobia Pithawalla and executive creative director Mihir Chanchani: “The task was to make Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk Heart Pop an integral part of every couple's Valentine Day Celebration. To do so, in our film the protagonist creates a magical moment which sets as a perfect background for the heart pop moment. Our film ends on question How far will you go for love?”
Ogilvy India head of strategic planning Ganapathy Balagopalan: "We discovered young people don't do enough to show the special someone in their life how they truly feel about them. This campaign encourages them to go the extra distance and make the special someone in their lives feel truly special on Valentine's day. It sharply positions the brand as a romantic symbol and has the potential to turn it into a cultural icon.”
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
