Coke, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive Seize India's Biggest Marketing Opportunity

About 8 percent of India’s population—everyone from billionaire Anil Ambani, brother of India’s richest man, to hardscrabble peasants—has trekked to the Ganges in the past eight weeks, seeking salvation at a religious festival called the Maha Kumbh Mela. Companies including Coca-Cola, Hindustan Unilever, and Colgate-Palmolive have made the same journey in a quest for profits.

Billed as the world’s largest gathering, the Kumbh is expected to draw about 100 million people before its conclusion on March 10. For advertisers, that’s roughly a once-a-decade chance to reach millions of new consumers. “The Kumbh is like an advertising bliss,” says Vipul Salvi, national creative director for OgilvyAction, a unit of Ogilvy & Mather. “It’s some 100 million people in one place, and that never happens anywhere else on the globe.”