McDowell's Soda renews its long-running "friendship" platform without giving it up

On September 17, 2026, McDowell's Soda, part of Diageo India, refreshed its long-running "Yaari" (friendship) brand platform as "Yaari Ki Nayi Vibe." It kept actor Kartik Aaryan as the face of the brand, refreshed the can design and brand music, while keeping the core theme of friendship intact. The judgment of how much accumulated brand equity to keep and how much to swap out offers a lesson in sequencing for Japanese beverage and food brands that have only shallow brand affinity built up in India so far.

The starting point: keeping the friendship banner, swapping out the "vibe"

What McDowell's Soda (Diageo India) unveiled on September 17 is a new chapter, "Yaari Ki Nayi Vibe," built on top of the existing "Yaari" platform. The can has been redrawn around a premium palette combining orange, teal, and silver, and the brand's musical hook, "Aao Twist Karein," has been rearranged and brought back. Centered on a campaign video featuring longtime brand ambassador Kartik Aaryan, the focus shifts to spontaneous exchanges and shared moments between friends. The campaign was produced by agency Saatchi & Saatchi India, with comments from Ananditta Datta, Diageo India's marketing and category head, and Kartik Smetacek, the agency's chief creative officer.

Background: a long-running brand renewing itself without discarding its equity

India's consumer brands face fast-turning younger audiences, and can look dated if they don't refresh their expression every few years. Yaari has been an existing platform anchored on the universal emotion of friendship, functioning as the brand's memory device. This refresh modernizes only the tone and packaging while keeping that core intact — a different approach from rebuilding from scratch. Carrying the musical hook forward through a rearrangement rather than dropping it entirely shows a design conscious of continuity in brand equity.

What changed, what stayed, and where the line was drawn

What was swapped out in this refresh is the can visuals and the tone of the campaign. What was kept is the friendship theme, flagship actor Kartik Aaryan, and the backbone of the brand's music. Novelty is delivered through look and sound texture, while the recognition cues consumers have built up over time are preserved. This construction — separating what to swap from what to leave in place — can be read as a practical way to add freshness without damaging brand equity. Replace the whole banner and awareness resets to zero; change nothing and the brand grows stale. This is a bet aimed at the middle ground.

How it is being received locally and in the industry

As far as advertising trade outlet afaqs has reported, Datta positions this refresh as an attempt to carry forward the spirit of friendship the brand has embodied while bridging it to a new generation. Smetacek explains that the creative aim lay in reworking the existing music asset with a contemporary sensibility. The coverage centers on the intent of management and the agency, and does not present data confirming consumer reaction one way or the other.

Implications for Japanese companies: don't swap out all of your brand equity at once

Japanese beverage and food brands entering India tend to bring over a finished logo, sound, and tagline wholesale from their home market. But at a stage when local awareness is still shallow, there is little brand equity worth protecting in the first place. The approach McDowell's Soda takes — sorting elements into a "layer to keep" and a "layer to update" — goes hand in hand with the work of first deciding what to anchor locally. The technique of carrying emotion through a celebrity casting is on a continuum with the case that turned a cricketer's jersey number into pricing which tied a number to a message through pricing, and McDonald's World Cup-linked promotion which brought a global IP into a local context through a promotion. The idea behind Starbucks's loyalty program for top-tier customers which locks in premium customers through membership experience, can also be read alongside these as a long-term model for building up brand equity.

Ripple effect on the market: pairing "celebrity and emotion" continues in beverages

The approach of casting a flagship actor for the long term and updating only the tone at seasonal or generational turning points is spreading as a technique for tying celebrity to emotion in the beverage category. The move to turn the drinking-occasion experience itself into brand equity also echoes the restaurant case that imported the "nomikai" experience a similar device on the restaurant side. If Japanese beverage brands want to compete on the same footing, the question becomes one of design that fixes a celebrity and a theme over a span of years and builds on it, rather than relying on one-off castings.

Practical information and related links

• An Indian case where social-media buzz translated directly into purchases
• How a promotion localized a global IP
• A design that locks in top-tier customers through status rather than discounts

Summary: start by deciding on the one "core to keep"

Whether a brand refresh succeeds or fails comes down not to how much is made new, but to the judgment of what is left in place. Japanese beverage and food brands considering entry into India should, early in the process, fix on one core to keep locally — whether a person, a sound, or a theme — and settle on an operating rule that confines updates to the layers outside that core. As a next step, it is worth building a single inventory sheet that sorts your own brand's elements into a "layer to keep" and a "layer to update."

Sources

• afaqs: House of McDowell’s Soda gives its Yaari platform a new vibe