Brand Update : Taste the Thunder is Back in Style

 Thums Up seems to be back with a bang this season.

The brand has launched a new music-led branded content piece featuring Hanumankind, Vishal Dadlani, and Sushin Shyam, and it feels like a powerful return to what Thums Up has always stood for: josh, intensity, and attitude.

For a brand like Thums Up, the challenge is not awareness. The challenge is keeping the brand’s energy alive in a market where cola advertising has increasingly become celebrity-heavy and visually glossy. Over the last few years, Thums Up’s communication often felt like it was leaning more on star power than on the brand’s raw personality.

The brand’s classic positioning space has always been clear. “Taste the Thunder” is not just a tagline—it is a brand identity. It signals boldness, masculinity, high energy, and a slightly rebellious spirit. Thums Up has historically owned this space better than any other cola in India.

However, in recent years, while the brand continued to use the language of adrenaline and thunder, the execution often felt diluted. The communication became more celebrity-driven, and the brand personality sometimes took a backseat.

The current campaign feels like a correction.

What works well is that the branded content is not trying to be “safe.” It is high-voltage, loud, youthful, and confident. The artists chosen also fit the mood. Hanumankind brings contemporary edge, Vishal Dadlani brings vocal power and familiarity, and Sushin Shyam brings the modern sound texture. Together, they create a piece of content that feels culturally relevant while staying rooted in the brand’s original DNA.

This is also a good example of how branded content can be more effective than conventional advertising when done right. Instead of forcing a 30-second message, the brand becomes part of a cultural experience. It creates recall not through repetition, but through vibe.

For long-time Thums Up fans, this campaign feels like a relief. It reminds us that strong brands do not need to borrow relevance—they only need to rediscover their own core.

Taste the Thunder.

Brand Update : “Eat 5 Star Do Nothing” and the Power of a Consistent Brand Theme

Cadbury Five Star has used its latest brand theme, “Eat 5 Star, Do Nothing”, to the hilt. This Valentine’s season, the brand has launched a new campaign that celebrates Valentine’s Day by doing nothing — and it has built a topical story around that idea with impressive consistency.

Valentine’s Day advertising is usually predictable. Brands flood the market with romance, gifting cues, emotional storytelling, and aspirational couples. In such a cluttered environment, the biggest challenge is not creativity — it is differentiation. Five Star manages to cut through this clutter by taking a contrarian route. Instead of joining the celebration, it mocks the pressure around the celebration.

The ad builds the hype effectively and delivers the punch with precision. It is topical, entertaining, and at the same time, completely aligned with the brand’s core personality. The brand is not “trying” to be relevant. It is simply extending its existing worldview into a seasonal context. This is where the campaign becomes a strong case study in branding. The most interesting aspect is not Valentine’s execution, but the power of a consistent brand platform. When a brand theme is strong and repeatedly reinforced, it becomes more than a tagline. It becomes a storytelling engine. It creates a familiar mental frame in the consumer’s mind, and every new campaign becomes easier to process, enjoy, and remember.

In Five Star’s case, “Do Nothing” is not just a line. It is a brand attitude — a cultural commentary on how modern life is overloaded with expectations. Such an approach makes the theme highly extensible. Whether it is exams, office stress, social pressure, or now Valentine’s Day, the brand can use the same platform to create new stories without reinventing itself every time.

This trend also highlights a key shift in advertising effectiveness. In a world of short attention spans and content overload, consistency often beats novelty. Brands that keep changing their positioning may win applause for individual ads, but they lose the compounding effect of long-term brand memory.

Five Star’s Valentine’s campaign is a good reminder that when a brand owns a strong theme, topical marketing becomes easier, sharper, and more impactful.

Stanley Tools : Work Faster

Corporate Brand : Stanley

Brand Analysis Count : 626 

The Indian hand tools market is a highly fragmented market with a market size of over $850 mn (6800 crore). The challenge in doing business in a fragmented market is the price-based competition. With many local players in the market, selling at a premium becomes a challenge, especially in a diverse, large market like India.

It is in this context that a brand like Stanley becomes intriguing. Stanley is a USA-based brand which has had a rich legacy since 1843. The company was founded by Frederick Stanley in Connecticut as a bolt and doorware company. From there, the company has grown to become a reputed player in the tools business. The company had a formal corporate presence in India from 1993. In 2010, the company merged with Black & Decker to become a major player in the Indian market. 

The tools and other related products that come in the B2B segment are basically used by professional plumbers and contractors. The interesting thing is that the growing popularity of DIY culture has opened a significant market for such products in India. Brands like Stanley will be able to reap the benefits of such an emerging trend. It is in this context that creating a brand becomes important. Stanley by design has created a brand based on the power of brand elements. The brand has been very wise in incorporating the brand element of colour in all products and packaging, thus creating a very prominent brand visual effect. The brand has a colour combination of yellow and black, which is itself very contrasting and visually striking. The brand has used these colours in the handles and all possible places in the product itself, along with the usual packaging. The combination gives a striking effect when the customer glances through the options. The power of brand elements has not got much attention in the branding sphere; the examples are plenty, but seldom do we see brands making the maximum use of colour combinations to create that stickiness in the mind of the consumer. 

Stanley as a brand is positioned as a brand that helps make work faster, and it does what it promises. The brand, with its history and focus on quality products, is well on its way to reaping the benefits of the emerging DIY culture in the times to come.