Asian Paints has unveiled its latest brand campaign, Rang De India, a music-led initiative designed to capture the emotional resonance of cricket within Indian households and position colour as an expression of shared experience. Launched in tandem with the company’s role as the Official Colour Partner for India Home Cricket, the campaign’s debut film aims to reflect unity and cultural cohesion at a time when organised sport continues to shape urban life and community engagement.
Sporting events often act as civic glue, bringing diverse neighbourhoods and generations together in living rooms, streets and public spaces. The Rang De India anthem leverages this phenomenon, mixing high-energy music with scenes of everyday cricket rituals to underscore how collective enthusiasm for the sport meshes with the deeper human desire for belonging and place-making.The film builds on a strategic partnership between Asian Paints and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), extending the company’s engagement with cricket beyond conventional sponsorship into cultural storytelling. It features performances by popular vocalists, with the track composed to mirror the emotional arc of match days—from quiet anticipation to celebratory crescendo—positioning the brand’s colour philosophy at the centre of life’s vivid moments.Brand strategists say this campaign reflects a broader shift in how corporations embed themselves in urban narratives. Rather than simply advertising products, companies are increasingly seeking to anchor their messaging in lived experiences that speak to collective identity, social routine and community emotion. A senior marketing executive notes that sports fandom, particularly in cricket-driven markets, is a potent cultural current that permeates social life and offers an effective means to build affinity beyond transactional engagements.
For Asian Paints, colour has long been presented as a conduit for personal expression and emotional resonance within built environments, whether in homes, workplaces or public spaces. By tying this ethos to shared rituals around cricket, the campaign seeks to deepen the brand’s relevance in the domestic sphere while highlighting how colour, like sport, can catalyse connection across socio-economic and regional divides.Urban planners and cultural theorists suggest this kind of narrative work can influence how cities and communities perceive collective gatherings and shared environments. It underscores sport’s role in activating public space and everyday life, while also pointing to how corporate storytelling can shape perceptions of inclusivity and belonging in diverse urban settings.While rooted in commercial strategy, the campaign’s emphasis on unity and shared cultural expression resonates within a wider urban context where inclusion, diversity and collective experience increasingly inform how cities live, work and celebrate together.
Looking ahead, the challenge for brands like Asian Paints will be balancing cultural storytelling with authentic engagement that reflects the lived realities of citizens across India’s varied urban and rural landscapes—ensuring that narratives of unity extend beyond anthem-style films into measurable social impact.
