Thums Up: Killing a Brand Not Always Succeed

In the year 1977 something happened which changed the dynamics of Indian industry altogether. Like many other industry, in beverage industry also, foreign players Coke and Pepsi were asked to close its India operation. Seeing this as an opportunity Ramesh Chauhan of Parle launched Thums Up as cola beverage. The product then went on to rule the Indian market for next 16 years. Things really changed in the year 1992, with Indian economy opening up, when both Coke and Pepsi reentered the indianmarket with a bang. Everybody was looking for the three way fight between Coke, Pepsi and Thums Up. But then something unusual happened. Giving in to the mighty power of these global giants, Ramesh Chauhan sold Thums Up to Coke for 120 crores.
Coke, as it has done in other countries, tried to kill the Thums Up brand in order to pave way for Coca Cola, its flagship brand to dominate the Indian market. However, this whole plan of killing once market-dominating brand of Thums Up did not went, as Coke would have planned. Thums up even after 13 years sells more than Coke and Pepsi. The brand is so strong that it has refused to die.  After 1985 “New Coke” failure, this can be termed as biggest blunder of Coke.
Thums Up with its extremely famous tagline of “Taste the Thunder” was something that Indian youth can never forget. It contains the highest carbonation among the cola brands, which appealed to the Indian youth the most and gives it product differentiation over other brands. The brand is very popular in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra Gujarat, UP, West Bengal, and Karnataka with Andhra contributing 30% of the sales.
With Thums Up; the largest selling cola at its fold, Coca Cola initially tried to kill the brand to pave the entry of Coke. But after few years they realized that only Pepsi is getting the benefit of absence of Thums Up and Coca Cola was struggling against it. So they have now relaunched the product. It has been positioned as manly brand. Its tagline was changed initially to “I want my Thunder”, but it did not succeed and the company retracted the old tagline. They used this brand mainly to target Pepsi and sweetness associated with Pepsi brand.
Right now Thums Up is degraded as a flanking brand for Coke. Coke has been using all macho film personalities like Akshay, Salman and Sunil Shetty to position this brand as a macho brand. We see sporadic bursts of promotions of this brand but one can see the dilemma of Coke about this brand. Full-scale promotion of the brand can take away the share of coke, which they cannot afford to do. Taking this brand away will help Pepsi. Therefore, he only choice is to push it along until it dies on its own.
Coke was been trying Half-heartedly to market the brand and still despite all these flaws in its branding the brand Thums Up is strong mainly due to its taste uniqueness. May be the consumers are not willing to let go the brand. This is a classic case of a brand getting an iconic status. A case where the customers take the ownership of the brand. Now Coke no longer owns the brand, consumers own it.