Thril Cold Drink

Failure of Thril Cold Drinks

1. History In 1977, India was left with a large void in the ‘cold drinks’ or carbonated drinks segment. American giant Coca Cola had just left the market over the Janata Party government’s  insistence  that the company reveal its recipe and comply with the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. Soon after, a cohort of made-in-India beverages jumped in to capture the market space –but it was McDowell’s cola brand Thril that won the market for a while with its catchy punchline:  “ Hum, tum aur Thril gaye mera dil ”.

2. Jostling for a Thril Thril was  introduced  in 1983 and soon after the company launched two other flavours  – a clear lime-based beverage Sprint and the orange- flavoured  Rush. Thril was fighting a tough competition with Parle’s ThumsUp , Limca and Gold Spot and Delhi-based Pure Drink’s Campa Cola and Campa Orange.

3. Surviving the competition  In the 1980s, the competition in the soft drink industry became so intense so that the beverage makers adopted aggressive advertisement and promotional strategies. While some soft drinks promised a free Maruti Deluxe Car, others offered tickets to the Olympic games,  colour televisions and video games, according to a  report .

4. How the brand died A  paper  by Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore in 1996, on ‘Brand Failures- Concepts and Causes’ used ‘ Thril ’ as a case study.  According to it, the brand failed due to wrong positioning as the product was positioned as a “space-age drink”, which indicates a technologically advanced and a modern drink, but it was promoted only based on the glamour-factor of celebrities endorsing it. “The brand did not survive at a time even when the cola market was in its growth phase,” it noted.

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