GIVA pulls Kriti Sanon Raksha Bandhan campaign after backlash
Jewellery brand GIVA has withdrawn its Raksha Bandhan advertisement featuring Kriti Sanon following social-media criticism over styling and perceived cultural insensitivity. The company apologised and said hurting sentiments was never its intent.
What happened
Indian jewellery brand GIVA withdrew its Raksha Bandhan campaign featuring Kriti Sanon after social-media backlash over its styling and perceived cultural
Why this matters
For potential partners or acquirers, the incident highlights the value of evaluating GIVA’s brand-governance, influencer-approval, and crisis-response capabilities alongside its growth metrics.
What to watch
- Volume and sentiment of social mentions over the next 48-72 hours, especially whether criticism moves from X and Instagram into mainstream news.
- Whether Kriti Sanon comments, distances herself, or participates in a corrective communication.
- Evidence of campaign withdrawal from all paid channels, partner pages, retail displays, and influencer reposts.
- Raksha Bandhan search interest, website traffic, conversion rate, and order cancellations versus GIVA's normal seasonal baseline.
- Competitor messaging emphasizing tradition, family values, or culturally authentic gifting.
- Any calls for boycott, complaints to advertising bodies, or criticism from prominent cultural or political voices.
- Issue a concise apology with clear ownership, avoiding defensive explanations or prolonged debate.
- Replace withdrawn assets immediately with product-led Raksha Bandhan communication rooted in familiar sibling-gifting cues.
- Deploy social listening and rapid-response moderation to identify whether criticism is fading or spreading across platforms and languages.
- Brief retail staff, marketplace partners, and customer-service teams with consistent messaging and escalation guidance.
- Review celebrity campaign approval processes for cultural-context testing, including pre-launch panels across key regional markets.
- Use targeted offers and CRM outreach to protect Raksha Bandhan conversion among high-intent shoppers rather than broad discounting.