Along with Thums Up and Limca, Gold Spot was the brand built by Ramesh Chauhan of Parle during the period of 1970’s to early 1990’s. Things really changed in the year 1992, with Indian economy opening up, when both Coke and Pepsi reentered the Indian market 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 all three brand to Coke. Within a year or so, Coke started to kill the brand to make way for its own brands in Indian market. Gold Spot was removed from Indian shelf for its international brand Fanta.
Gold Spot was the orange drink with a Zingy taste. This iconic youth brand was positioned as "Zing Thing" and was promoted heavily through all media. The jingle " Gold Spot. Gold Spot was positioned as the youth brand and the ads talked about being crazy about the brand.
But the brand was killed. Fanta was launched but till now the brand has not being able to take the position of Gold Spot. Coke was not able to clearly focus on the segmentation of Fanta. Fanta is never perceived as a youth brand. Fanta is not viewed or targeted at college students/youth. This confused targeting may have crippled the growth of Fanta and still it couldn't reach the status of Gold Spot. Coke expected that the users of Gold Spot will migrate to Fanta but it did not happened.
Killing a brand, which was highly successful to launch its own international brand, clearly did not worked for Coca Cola in Indian context. In recent years both Thums Up and Limca have been re-launched again but still there is no sign of Gold Spot. May be in future, we will see this brand to come back again.
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