Brands

need spas

too

Exploring

brand revitalization

across categories

“Buildings age and become dilapidated. Machines wear out. People

die.

But what live on are the brands.” Sir Hector Laing, CEO, United Biscuits, UK

Why are brand ageing faster today?

Brands are like human beings in a lot of ways. In many

customer researches, a common question is “If this brand were a person, who would it be?”

Customers are always able to personify the brand with

such detail that you could clearly visualize him/her

Why are brand ageing faster today?

Apart from having a personality link, brands behave like human beings even when it comes to their lifecycles.

Much like people, brands are born, they grow, and they mature, go through a decline phase and eventually die.

Re-birth of brands is the key to success today.

Human lifecycle is getting accelerated?

Used to be, we merely wished to become younger or postpone old age.

Guess what?

Brands are going through

the same seismic shifts.

Brands are mere dominos,

deeply affected by these cultural

shifts.

More often than not,

brands react in a knee-jerk fashion.

With promotions and price undercuts.

And too much attention to short-term

metrics.

Shortening the product lifecycle…• The PLC curve is steeper than ever before indicating

that an increasingly large proportion of sales occur soon after the introduction of the product

• A narrow window of opportunity exists to earn profits on a new product before competition catches up and margins begin to shrink

• Companies cannot afford to miss out on the initial bang, and stock-out becomes an expensive proposition

• Marketers are faced with an interesting paradox– Products are lasting longer; the time in which they are being

outmoded is growing shorter

Life cycle in its purest form, does not exist

The Changing Product Life Cycle Traditional S-Curve

The “New” S-Curve

The question is:

How can brands make

the product life cycle theory irrelevant?

What strategies are available

for us to revitalize brands?

#1. Reinvent to become a contemporary

classic

#2. Take on multiple avatars to cater to shorter attention

spans

One brand, many lives Develop future versions to restart

lifecycle

Design for a shorter life

(Apple)

#3. Be different things to different people. Or to the same

person.

Keeping creating “new” news

Sometimes useful to make your own product obsolete before competition

#4. The Bowling Alley strategy: Pick up different market segments one at

a time

Different brand lifecycles for different target segments

Build critical mass and focus resources

Brand X

#5. Reinvent to make the competition obsolete

#6. Engage in conversation and creation

Buzz marketingCo-creationSocial marketingExperimentational budget

The key lesson in all this is that

brand vitalization calls for

revolutionary changes, not

evolutionary changes.

A brand vitalization scorecard

• Can you say yes to at least 3 of the following 5 questions?

– It has always been moderate or premium-priced (never discounted).

– It has been under-advertised / under-promoted.

– It has a strong, wide distribution network.

– It has a long-held heritage.

– It has a distinct point of differentiation.

If you did say yes to at least 3 of the above, then your brand is ready for vitalization.