Thums Up: The Cola Indians Refused To Give Up
Thums Up exists because Coca-Cola left India, and belongs to Coca-Cola because it came back. What happened in between is the most unusual comeback in Indian consumer goods, because the brand did not need reviving so much as it needed to survive its own owner.
Ramesh Chauhan created it in 1977 under Parle, which already had Limca and Gold Spot, and built the formula from scratch with notes of cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. The name was a deliberate misspelling of a familiar gesture.
The insight
The opening was regulatory rather than creative. Coca-Cola withdrew from India in the late 1970s rather than meet conditions on disclosing its formula and diluting its equity, and an entire category was left without its dominant player.
Parle moved into the gap with a cola built for Indian palates and a positioning that was unusually aggressive for the period. Where soft drinks were sold as refreshment, this one was sold as strength.
The execution
Thunder did the work. The brand committed to a single idea, a cola that was harder, fizzier and more adult than the alternatives, and held it for decades across changes of ownership that would normally scatter a positioning entirely.
By the time Pepsi arrived in 1991 and Coca-Cola returned in 1993, the brand was not a product with a market share. It was a preference with a personality, which is a far more difficult thing for a competitor to buy out.
Why Thums Up matters
Because of what happened after Parle sold its carbonated brands to Coca-Cola India in 1993. Reported figures for that sale vary considerably between sources, so the number is best left out of it.
What followed is the part the industry still argues about. It is widely believed that the acquisition was intended to retire a rival, and Coca-Cola has repeatedly denied it. What is not in dispute is the outcome: drinkers did not move across to Coke, and the brand its new owner was accused of wanting to shelve went on being marketed because the demand would not go away.
The lesson
A brand that lives in a company can be retired by that company. A brand that lives in a preference cannot, and the difference only becomes visible when someone tries.
Thums Up is the clearest Indian demonstration that the asset in a consumer brand is not the recipe, the distribution or even the advertising. It is whether a person standing at a shop will accept the substitute, and enough of them would not.