How Legacy Brands Can Remain Relevant Amid Disruptors

While preserving brand continuity and product integrity must be a priority, resting on your laurels in an era defined by innovation and disruption is not an option.

For today’s businesses, few things are as valuable as a respected legacy. In a culture where today’s hottest startup is often forgotten by the end of next week, the recognition and trust that come with longevity are an asset that all the money and hype in the world cannot buy. However, these fast-paced times present some unique challenges for legacy brands. While preserving brand continuity and product integrity must be a priority, resting on your laurels in an era defined by innovation and disruption is not an option. Consumer values have changed, leaving many established companies with a need to re-evaluate what they have to offer the modern marketplace. Knowing who their target audience is and what may be popping up on the competitive landscape are crucial insights for brands looking to leverage their heritage while staying modern. In order to do that, legacy brands must rethink how they are gathering the information they use to define their place in the world. Basic segmentation and other methods these companies may have employed a generation ago can no longer provide enough insight to navigate a rapidly diversifying consumer base and an increasingly fragmented culture. These are the methods legacy brands must explore if they want to truly understand their place in today’s culture and build a strategy that can keep them relevant for years to come. Dig Deeper Into Demographics Many legacy brands were founded with one target audience in mind, only to find themselves decades later with goals that were built for success in an entirely different culture. It’s not enough to assume that women 18 to 34 are your target just because that’s who you’ve been selling to for 100 years. Researching and segmenting the current market is necessary, but doesn’t provide the insights a brand needs to push it forward. Studying emerging demographics is a good way for legacy brands to go beyond the basics and start to look around corners. Digging into population trends, shifting ethnic composition, immigration, growth, and birth rates can paint a picture of what general direction a brand should be looking toward.

From there, internal and external sales data can shed light on new opportunities, while tools like social listening, analysis of online reviews, usage, and attitudinal studies can tell a brand how its product has evolved in the minds of consumers. All of this information can provide a clearer view of a brand’s value in the current marketplace, what opportunities they might be missing, where they are spending too many resources, and what consumers they should focus on.

Scientific Actualities

Brands need to take into account the things they can’t control—like climate change or the rise of certain health issues—and future-proof their businesses by preparing for how they will affect the consumer and the supply chain.

Rising skin cancer rates and the depletion of the ozone are two scientific actualities that had an impact on the beauty market. Smart brands saw how these issues would affect the market and went into research and development on UV protective skin-care products early. Years later, makeup and moisturizers that feature SPF are common, but the industry continues to innovate and compete for the best formulations.

These sorts of changes can have a massive impact on what consumers need and want and pack the potential to change industry-wide norms. Legacy brands must work to see these actualities coming down the pipeline and adjust their products in a way that maintains their hard-won consumer trust, while delivering products that meet the market’s changing needs.

Behavioral Tendencies

While big data and analytics have been looked at as a cure-all for brands working to better understand consumers, it tends to over-deliver on “what” people are doing and under-deliver on “why” they’re doing it, leaving marketers with few actionable insights from which to build a strategy.

Getting out and interacting with consumers face to face is still the gold standard for delivering the kind of data that can drive a business. Traditionally, market research was observational and offered little transparency, giving participants only vague details about the products they were collecting data on. This is starting to change.

Today, forward-looking marketers are employing immersive research methods that blur the line between qualitative research and ethnography. By researching consumers in their own environments and being direct about the products they are representing, they are yielding deeper insights into consumer behaviors and preferences and making it easier for marketers to apply the results directly to their brands.

Armed with a deeper understanding of what consumers want, why they want it, and the outside forces that could shift the marketplace as we know it, legacy brands can compete with newcomers with a combination of hard-won trust and cutting-edge innovation that is tough to beat.