UNITED STATES, October 23, 2022 (CNN): More and more major brands are recognizing the festival of lights, running ad campaigns and stocking products related to the holiday in the US. South Asian Americans who celebrate Diwali can now pick up fireworks from Costco, greeting cards from Hallmark and party decorations from Target. Diwali, also known as Deepavali, is one of the most important festivals in Hinduism. The holiday also has significance for Sikhs and Jains, and is celebrated not just in India, but in Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore and other countries with South Asian diasporas. The growing acknowledgment of the holiday in the US is a marked shift for many first- and second-generation South Asian Americans who grew up celebrating the festival at home but rarely saw it acknowledged outside of their communities, says Soni Satpathy-Singh, who runs the meal delivery review website Meal Matchmaker.
Eight years ago, Satpathy-Singh wrote a piece for Brown Girl Magazine lamenting that Diwali hadn’t caught the attention of mass market retailers, despite the Indian American population’s growing numbers and high incomes. Today, the landscape looks much different. “It’s interesting to see how much has developed over the last eight years just in terms of things you can buy to celebrate Diwali,” she told CNN. The proliferation of Diwali ad campaigns and products, marketing strategists and business owners say, reflects just how much the South Asian population in the US has grown in recent years. Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial or ethnic group in the US, and are projected to become the country’s largest immigrant group by the middle of the century, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. At 4.6 million people, Indian Americans account for about 21% of that group, more than doubling in population from 2000 to 2019.
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https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/23/business/diwali-products-marketing-us-mainstream-cec/index.html