40 Years & Counting: Thums Up plays to its strengths

With a new variant, Coca-Cola is stepping up the strong cola narrative that has been associated with the brand for the last four decades

It is one of India's best-loved home-grown brands, and now, Thums Up, the country's largest cola drink, is rolling out its first variant after four decades. To some, the move may seem out of context. Why a variant now, when the flagship remains the darling of the masses?

But Coca-Cola India, which owns the brand since 1993 when cola king Ramesh Chauhan sold Thums Up among other soft-drinks to the multi-national, says there is a rationale to it.

“It was time to innovate the core,” explains Vijay Parasuraman, vice president, marketing, Coca-Cola India & Southwest Asia. “Thums Up remains a strong cola and there is no taking away from that. With Thums Up Charged (the new variant), the attribute of strength moves to the next level. It is a stronger drink in comparison to the flagship and targeted at those who want a stronger kick from their soft-drink,” he says.

Brand experts say this is the best way forward for a legacy brand rooted in its product attributes. “It is impossible to imagine Thums Up as anything else but a strong cola. It was always the spicier and fizzier of the soft-drinks in the marketplace; reinforced by its macho image. When the identity of a brand is this strong, it is impossible to play around too much with its core,” says KV Sridhar, founder and chief creative officer, HyperCollective, who worked on Thums Up for two decades while at Leo Burnett, the agency that handled the brand following Coca-Cola’s acquisition. It continues to be its brand custodian.

Prior to Leo Burnett, Thums Up was handled by ad agencies Trikaya (now Grey) and Ambience Advertising (now merged into Publicis Worldwide India), respectively. It was Ravi Gupta, founder of Trikaya, who came up with the tagline – ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ – to announce Thums Up’s launch in 1977. 

Positioned as a desi response to an American import, namely, Coca-Cola, which was forced to exit India the same year, Thums Up’s early ad campaigns played on the fun, food and friends quotient aptly, showing people enjoy the soft-drink even as they partied at the beach or had a jolly time elsewhere. 

Thums Up later transformed into a masculine brand, defined by the ‘Taste the Thunder’ campaign of the 1980s, created by Ashok Kurien’s Ambience Advertising. The Thums Up male could be seen doing anything – from bungee jumping to performing dare-devil stunts and even saving people – as he sought his adrenaline rush. This platform of masculinity and strength has stayed with the brand to this day.

But, as Thums Up makes the next leap forward, the challenge, say experts, will be to ensure it does not dilute its brand promise too much.

Coca-Cola India has identified Thums Up as a billion-dollar domestic brand, the second after Maaza, the country’s largest juice drink. Parasuraman says that Thums Up should touch sales of Rs 6,500 crore (or $1 billion) in two years from around Rs 5,200 crore (or $800 million) now. 

The new variant is expected to help in this endeavour as it recruits new consumers into the fold. Parallely, Coca-Cola India is also pushing distribution of Thums Up Charged across India and will make it available in all formats from glass to PET bottles and cans. A new ad campaign will also break shortly.

THUMS UP’S JOURNEY SO FAR

• 1977-80: Brand Thums Up is created as emergency ends and Coca-Cola exits the country. The period is marked by a sense of déjà vu. Campaigns such as ‘Happy Days Are Here Again’ and ‘Food, friends and Thums Up’ fuel this thought

• 1980s: Thums Up becomes masculine as the brand equates machismo and strength. While Thums Up was the strong cola taste-wise,‘Taste the Thunder’ gave it visual character

• 1990s: ‘Taste the Thunder’ becomes personal, with the alpha male now seeking his own thunder. Thus ‘I Want My Thunder’. Ads here show the protagonist indulging in dare-devilry to get his bottle of cola

• 2001-2011: ‘Thums Up Taste Challenge’ sees the brand take on rival Pepsi on taste using Salman Khan as the brand ambassador. This campaign ran for two years. 2003 saw the return of ‘Taste the Thunder’, continuing for nearly a decade

• 2012-2017: ‘Taste the Thunder’ gets a Hindi spin with ‘Aaj Kuch Toofani Karte Hain’ featuring brand ambassadors Salman Khan and Mahesh Babu in different commercials. The campaign continued till 2015, replaced by ‘Main Hoon Toofani’ in 2016. The latest commercial features new brand ambassador Ranveer Singh on the same platform