The Challenge

In an era where daily commutes dominate urban routines, a leading beverage brand wanted to decode the emotional, behavioral, and cultural texture of “on-the-go” consumption. The aim was not just to size the opportunity, but to deeply empathize with what shapes and defines the commuting experience—across moods, modes, moments, and media.

With a specific interest in connecting more meaningfully with young, mobile Indians—especially in key metros and their expanding suburbs—the brand sought to understand how commutes influence mood, hydration, snack choices, and digital habits.

Our Approach

• We undertook a social scraping-led immersion, bringing together volume, emotion, context, and culture from across the digital landscape. Our method integrated:

• Macro social scraping across 1 year of data

– 2 million+ Twitter mentions, 9,000+ YouTube pulls, Reddit, Quora, blogs, news

– Instagram Graph API & metadata across 250+ hashtags

– Keyword queries from search behavior (non-volume indexed)

• Mood-mapping and theme clustering across 5 key lenses:

• Dominant emotions

• Commute goals

• Lived experiences

• Interactions and co-travelers

• On-the-go food & drink rituals

• City-level nuances and regional inflections

• Secondary data overlays to correlate chatter with structural realities (e.g., monsoon delays, mode shifts, congestion levels)

• This allowed us to move beyond chatter into coded micro-moments of need, relief, and consumption—all within the real-world stressors of Indian urban mobility.

The Impact

• The study reframed how commutes are emotionally experienced, revealing: Rich cues for localization and cultural anchoring, in the brands positioning and outreach

• This textured lens now inputs into brand expression, activation ideas, and digital engagement routes—reimagining the brand as a companion to the commuter’s journey, not just a product to consume.