Bata India has shifted 45% of its marketing budget to digital, moved nearly half of its video advertising to connected TV, and generated most of its recent creative work using AI. The company has also exited retainer creative agencies, built a dedicated influencer marketing team, and cut production costs significantly as it overhauls how it reaches younger consumers.
The changes come as the 2,000-store footwear company targets Gen Z shoppers across India, with marketing decisions increasingly made by a team whose average age, excluding chief strategy and brand officer Badri Beriwal, sits around 27. Beriwal outlined the strategy in an interview with Storyboard18.
AI handles the bulk of creative production
Bata's most dramatic internal change has been in how advertising gets made. Using a custom system built with marketing platform Zocket, brand teams feed briefs into an AI tool that generates creatives. Brand managers approve or provide feedback, then performance data flows back into the system.
"Any creative that you see going out in the last three months has largely been generated through AI," Beriwal said.
The economics of production have already shifted. "Last year, we were shooting our advertising in Spain. This year, everything has been done through AI. Pretty much 100% has been done through AI." Beriwal said agency and production expenses have "significantly come down."
That's driven Bata to largely do away with its retainer model. "We've largely exited all retainer creative agencies. In the last one year, I don't think we have any creative agency on retainer," Beriwal said. Agencies may still be brought in when a campaign demands a bigger creative bet, "but there also, production happens through AI."
Media buying is an exception - Bata continues to work with Zenith, which handles the company's full-funnel media planning as part of the media agency's buying scale. AI for Creatives at this scale, Beriwal said, has not eliminated human judgment, which remains needed for brand stewardship and long-term strategy - it has narrowed the day-to-day production role that agencies previously held.
CTV and influencers grab the video and creator budget
On the media side, Bata has pulled back from generic television spots and shifted toward CTV, YouTube, and digital video. "Almost 45% of our video spends go towards CTV now, because that's where the audience that we want to target is," Beriwal said.
Influencer marketing has grown into a substantial line item at 10-15% of the total marketing budget. Bata created a dedicated influencer marketing team last year and is building toward what Beriwal called an AI-enabled "content factory." That approach targets celebrities and macro influencers for major quarterly campaigns, while micro and nano creators deliver regional and vernacular scale.
Bata also applies a new filter when selecting creators: whether they will accept AI-generated adaptations of their content and likeness. "Influencers and content creators who are okay with AI content is another filter that we are putting," Beriwal said. The company has passed on at least one creator who refused to work with AI-led content.
Young team leads, and search tactics that change as AI
The move toward younger consumers starts internally. "If I'm not mistaken, the average age of my marketing team would be less than 30... if you are to take me out, the team's age would be 27," Beriwal said. "Whatever you and I want to think about how Gen Z thinks, till the time you have team members with that mindset, you will not be able to connect with them. It starts from home."
The company also reworking what it calls "AI SEO" - ensuring content, reviews, and information is findable by AI research tools, alongside traditional search. "It is not just about old-age SEO anymore. Are you AI SEO?" he asked.
The festive push is regional, and print earns on one big day
Almost 35% of Bata's annual marketing spend goes or deployed during the festive season, a figure Beriwal said the company will scale further after nearly doubling it last year. This time the campaigns are customized regionally, with Onam, Durga Puja, and Diwali each getting their own creative treatment.
This is not purely digital effort. Bata continues to buy print for its "huge role" in generating large reach in a single day. "Once you put your ad, in one day, one shot, you get an instant reach" through English and regional same-day dailies, Beriwal said.
Quick commerce and stores speed up delivery
Bata is also testing faster delivery channels, activated over 1,000 stores for Myntra Now and working with Zepto as lifestyle commerce borrows from quick-commerce habits. "Consumers are actually developing a habit of instantly gratifying themselves by checking one of these quick-commerce platforms to see if they can get the product now," he said.
Inside its physical network, Bata is adopting zero-based merchandising that uses data science to tailor sides per store and camera analytics to improve the in-store experience.
Why this matters for creatives
Bata's shift is one clear signal that working within retainer agencies or producing advertising shoot-led work through classic production pipelines will edge out. If a major consumer brand is creating ~100% of its output via AI collaboratives - including approved-in-tool workflows - Creative roles will increasingly sit inside brand teams operating the AI systems directly, not in outside agencies that supply creatives manually.
As mentioned, Bata has a new test filter for freelance creators: willingness to have their work and likeness to AI-adapted at scale. The agencies that survive under this model are the ones helping brand teams commission generative pipelines as opposed to creating every asset by hand.
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