What Thums Up teaches us about studying the room without borrowing the perfume

A BudBee India Thought Leadership Series

 

In the first cycle of Romancing the Brand – The Wingman’s POV, we spoke about borrowed charm and why brands should stop wearing their competitor’s perfume.

That conversation was about imitation. This one digs deeper into research.

Because, let’s be honest… competitor research is not the villain. A brand that refuses to study its competition is not being original. It is simply walking into a crowded room with great confidence and absolutely no idea who is already getting attention near the bar.

The problem begins when research becomes a fragrance counter.

The brand walks in, smells what everyone else is wearing, points to the one getting the most compliments and says, “We’ll take something like that. But slightly different, of course.”

That “slightly different” has caused many brands to lose their own scent in the name of safety.

Good competitor research should help a brand understand the room. What is already attractive? What is overused? What does the audience expect? What space is still open? Most importantly, what can the brand honestly carry without looking like it borrowed confidence from someone else’s wardrobe?

There aren’t many Indian beverage stories that explain this better than Thums Up.

 

The Cola Room Already Had Charm

Cola was never an empty room.

It already had youth, energy, friendship, refreshment, music, sport, celebration and universal coolness built into the category. Globally, cola brands have often romanced people through happiness, togetherness and aspiration.

So the temptation was obvious…

Use young people. Add music. Add bubbles. Add laughter. Add a chilled bottle with condensation that looks more emotionally available than most people after office hours.

And yes, category codes exist for a reason. Ignoring them completely can make a brand look disconnected.

But Thums Up did something more interesting. It did not simply try to become another pleasant cola in the room. It leaned into strength.

Not soft refreshment. Not polite happiness. Not universal sweetness.

Strength. Thunder. Intensity.

That is not just a campaign mood. That is a personality choice.

The lesson is not that every brand should become loud, rugged or thunderous. Please don’t. The world has enough fake thunder already. The lesson is that Thums Up seemed to understand something sharper: if the category is already full of smooth charm, there may be value in owning force.

That is what good competitor research should reveal.

Not what to copy. But what to choose.

 

The Physics of Resonance

Here comes the basic physics, because by now it would be rude to leave it outside the room.

Resonance happens when a system responds strongly to a particular frequency. The force does not always need to be huge. It needs to be right for that system.

Branding behaves similarly.

A message does not become powerful only because it is loud, expensive or visible everywhere. It becomes powerful when it meets the audience at a frequency they are ready to respond to.

That is why copying a competitor’s expression can fail even when the original worked beautifully. The competitor’s tone, line, packaging or campaign may resonate because it matches the brand’s history, product experience, audience expectation and repeated behaviour. When another brand borrows the same expression without the same underlying frequency, the market hears the sound, but it does not vibrate.

It feels familiar… Not magnetic.

Thums Up’s strength was not simply that it shouted louder. It kept returning to a frequency that made sense for the product and the market memory around it. Strong taste. Strong attitude. Strong recall.

The romance was not borrowed.

It was repeated until people knew how to recognise it.

 

What Thums Up Repositioned

Thums Up did not behave like a brand asking:

“How do we become another cola?”

It behaved more like a brand asking:

“What if cola in India did not need to be smooth, polite and universally charming? What if it could be stronger, more intense and more thunderous?”

That is not a cosmetic shift. That is a relationship shift.

A smooth cola wants to be liked easily.

A thunderous cola wants to be chosen with a little attitude.

One is refreshment as social ease.

The other is refreshment as force.

For Thums Up, the interesting part is not only the advertising bravado. It is that the product experience, language and campaign world could sit together. The product did not whisper while the campaign shouted.

That is why the thunder had somewhere to land.

 

The Fragrance Counter Mistake

The fragrance counter mistake happens when a brand studies only the surface of attraction.

It notices that a competitor uses humour, so it starts cracking jokes. It notices that a competitor looks premium, so it darkens the colour palette. It notices that a competitor uses celebrities, so it hunts for a familiar face. It notices that a competitor has short copy, so it removes words and calls the emptiness sophistication.

But attraction is rarely that transferable.

In romance, you cannot borrow someone’s perfume and assume their chemistry has moved with it. The scent may be the same, but the skin is different. The confidence is different. The story is different. The way someone carries it is different.

Brands forget this.

They copy the visible layer and then wonder why the market does not respond with the same affection.

The audience was never in love with the perfume alone.

They were responding to the person wearing it.

 

The Wingman’s POV

In romance, competitor research is like watching the room before walking across it.

Who is already charming whom? Who is trying too hard? Who owns quiet confidence? Who is getting attention but not trust? Who looks attractive but may be exhausting after five minutes?

A sensible person learns from the room.

A nervous person copies the best-dressed person in it.

Brands do the same.

That is why competitor research is not a fragrance counter. It is not where the brand goes to pick a scent that worked on someone else. It is where the brand learns what the room already knows, what the room is bored of, and what kind of presence it can honestly carry.

Thums Up did not become memorable by behaving like every other cola trying to be smoothly refreshing. It became memorable by carrying thunder long enough for the market to recognise the sound.

And that is the repositioning lesson.

Instead of asking:

“Can we do something like them, but different?”

Ask:

“What frequency can we own that the category has not already overplayed?”

Because brands do not need borrowed charm.

They need honest chemistry.

 

When you need a wingman who understands your love language, coffee and conversations are just a buzz away.