How Nescafé’s advertising evolved with India’s instant coffee culture

When you think of instant coffee, you almost instantly think of Nescafé and its red packet. The aroma that hits when the foil peels back. For most of us, a decent coffee has always been just a glass of milk/water and this red packet. How you and I met Nescafé is one story, but it was on Indian shelves before either of us was born. The more interesting question is how our parents and grandparents discovered it. While they grew up on tea, coffee was either a restaurant order or a South Indian household ritual, made slowly with a filter. So how did a powder in a tin get into those kitchens? Where Nescafé began In 1938, Nestlé introduced Nescafé, a soluble powdered coffee. Max Morgenthaler, the Nestlé chemist behind it, was working on a coffee that would not go stale. Soldiers carried it through the Second World War. At one point, a US Nescafé plant sent its entire output to the military. The women's market in Britain Britain became one of Nescafé's biggest markets, and its ads there show how the brand spoke to women. A 1940s print ad ran in the Homes and Gardens section of a magazine, a space aimed at women. It showed three women in work clothes, where two had no coffee, and one held a tin. The print read "One of the lucky ones! She's got a tin of Nescafé”. Around half a million women had joined the uniformed services, and millions more worked in factories and on farms. The ad sold Nescafé as a small reward for a working woman, and a hard-to-find one. Instant coffee then picked up a bad reputation. Many saw it as a shortcut for laziness, and ground coffee was the household choice. In the early 1950s, advertisers stopped talking about convenience and talked about flavour and aroma. Instant coffee began to signal a woman who was busy, modern and outgoing. Entering India: a category that had to be built Nestlé launched Nescafé in India in 1963, in a market where, in most states, coffee was costly and occasional. In the South, people made filter coffee from a decoction of Arabica, Robusta and chicory, which was time-consuming. Which is why the brand's first campaign came up with the tagline, "The coffee with life in it. Made in just 5 seconds." The message was about method, where ads showed three steps in print: a spoon of powder in a cup, hot milk or water, a stir. Print and radio were the main media then, as television had not reached most homes. View this post on Instagram The 1990s: One product becomes several By the 1990s, Nestlé saw that one message could not work across the country. In the North and West, coffee stood for a cosmopolitan, youthful life. In the South, which accounts for more than half of India's coffee consumption, people wanted the strong body and bitterness of a coffee-chicory blend. The company split its range: Nescafé Classic was pure soluble coffee for urban youth and young workers. Nescafé Sunrise was a 70:30 coffee-chicory blend, made to compete with Hindustan Unilever's Bru in the South. Nescafé Gold was a freeze-dried premium line, introduced in 2000 and expanded in 2019. With this expansion, advertising moved from explaining how to make coffee to tying coffee to the start of the day. The 'Taste That Gets You Going' campaign ran on Doordarshan and in full-page print ads. 2012-2013: Celebrities and a shaker By 2010, cafés such as Café Coffee Day and Barista had made coffee a public meeting point. Building on the observation, the brand hired film stars to reach young buyers. A TV spot with Deepika Padukone and Purab Kohli played on friendship and flirting over coffee. A second, for the 'Shake It to Make It' promotion, added filmmaker Karan Johar. As the coffee sales seemed to drop that summer, the brand gave out branded plastic shakers with coffee jars to push cold coffee. In the South, the Sunrise ads starred the couple Surya and Jyothika, and showed morning coffee as a family moment. 2014-2016: Characters replace stars By 2014, many Indian brands used celebrities; thus, the brand and its agency, McCann Worldgroup, chose to tell stories about ordinary young people instead. The idea was that coffee did more than wake you up; it kept you going through setbacks, and the campaign ran as three films. 'The Comedian,' released online on September 5, 2014, and directed by Vinil Mathew, starred Hussain Dalal as Rishi, a stand-up comic with a stammer. He turns the stammer into the campaign headline: "Thank god for coffee. It kept me go-go-going and kept you a-a-awake”, with the hashtag #ItAllStarts. 'The Cartoonist,' 2015, featuring Vikrant Massey, played a newspaper cartoonist who loses his job when the paper drops its cartoon column. He keeps drawing late at night and puts his work online. The film was about adapting to digital work. 'RJ Rishi,' 2016, starred Sumeet Thakur as RJ Rishi Rawat, who hosts a 5:30 to 7 AM radio slot and gets no calls. He keeps going, and the show slowly finds listeners. The line was "Starting something new is tough. Staying started is tougher” with the hashtag #StayStarted. The films first ran on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, not on TV. The brand's YouTube channel recorded a 194% rise in views that month, with about 50,000 shares. Following the views, the brand launched a radio show starting September 1, 2016. Red FM 93.5 ran a daily show called Nescafé Mornings in the same 5:30 to 7 AM slot, hosted under the RJ Rishi name. The MTV Presents Nescafé Labs platform also connected young talent with mentors in creative industries. 2018 onwards: Pace and the street From 2018, the brand collaborated with McCann's platform and launched #BadalLifeKiRaftaar. It spoke to people moving from school to college, or college to a first job, in cities that were moving faster. Coffee was shown as the energy to keep up. Outdoor ads got more physical in this period. In Mumbai, during the monsoon, Nescafé put up a 3D replica of its red mug at transit points including Bandra, Worli and Juhu. Hidden misting units made it give off real steam when it rained. More than 40 bus shelters in the city were turned into branded waiting areas, with backlit panels and messages that changed with the weather. 2023-2026: A new sound, and the farmer In Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka, Sunrise ads made by BBH India changed who made the coffee. Older ads showed a homemaker serving the family. The newer ones showed working couples who share chores, where one partner makes the morning coffee so the other can rest. The regional TV spots also ran as geo-targeted videos on OTT platforms. In March 2025, Nestlé India and McCann Gurugram dropped the four-note guitar tune. In its place came an original Hindi hip-hop jingle under the theme ' Bana Apni Duniya' (make your world). The main film ran 90 seconds and followed three college students. Arav studies under family pressure for competitive exams. Vrinda builds nesting boxes for sparrows, and Aveka rehearses late to win a drummer's seat in an indie band. Coffee appears as a companion for late nights, and the ad focuses on their own goals. The brand has also moved toward sourcing, with the International Coffee Day 2024 spot, Nescafé Sunrise, releasing ads thanking coffee farmers in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Ahead of International Coffee Day on October 1, 2026, Nestlé linked these stories to the 'Bana Apni Duniya' platform. Over six decades, Nescafé's India advertising has moved through several stages. It taught people how to make coffee, tied it to mornings, used celebrities and told stories about struggling young people. Each stage followed who was buying coffee at that time.