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Is this an official Thums Up ad – or not?
A stunning tribute to Kapil Mohan, the man who turned Old Monk into a cult brand, has gone viral. And it has been created by an ad man from a rival agency – presumably out of love for the brand.
Within 24 hours of its creation, the visual of a glass tumbler full of dark liquid in the top half and, in apparent defiance of gravity, an empty bottom half, has raced across social media.
Below is the caption, ‘The glass is half empty’ accompanied by smaller text which says ‘RIP Kapil Mohan, the man behind Old Monk’. Below, the Thums Up logo.
Brijesh Jacob |
It’s a simple, brilliant tribute to the symbiotic relationship between Old Monk and Thums Up.
The ad is so tastefully done that most people naturally assumed that this was an official tribute from Thums Up, which is handled by the ad agency Leo Burnett.
Yesterday Jacob tweeted this visual with the message ‘What the folks at @ThumsUpOfficial should have done’. And he added a disclaimer, ‘(Spec work and not commissioned by client)’
We are awaiting a reaction from both Jacob as well as Leo Burnett, the agency on the Thums Up account. Meanwhile all we can say is that this is a classic case of how consumers treat the brand as their own in the age of social media.