With over twenty five years of company naming and branding expertise, Tungsten founder Phil Davis is a marketing and advertising veteran, having personally named over 200 companies, products and services worldwide. For 17 years, Phil ran a full service advertising firm in the Tampa Bay region of Florida, before starting Tungsten Branding (www.tungstenbranding.com). As a branding expert, Phil has been quoted in Inc.com, Businessweek, and Entrepreneur, as well as industry-specific publications. In addition to leading the creative team, Phil is a frequent keynote speaker and blog contributor on the subject of brilliant branding.
How can companies work towards reviving dormant and dead brands?
I think it’s important to distinguish between “dead” brands, as in bankrupt ones, and “dormant” brands, or ones that have been shelved or have diminished in popularity. For dead brands, the cost of acquiring the mark, and then re-launching the name, can be prohibitive. As in the case with humans, it’s much easier to revive an ailing brand than to raise one from the dead. Old Spice is a great example of a brand that was associated with older consumers, and through innovative use of social media, was brought current again. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes ran a campaign a number of years ago where they implored consumers to “Try Kellogg’s Corn Flakes again, for the very first time.” In that promotion, they are reminding customers to re-experience the taste, flavour and goodness that made the brand popular in the first place. Specifically, companies can work to revive dormant or dying brands by doing the following: Reposition the brand to serve a new audience or meet a new need; Explore brand licensing agreements to leverage the brand’s equity, generate revenue and increase awareness; Consider brand extensions (e.g. as Coke did with Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, et cetera); and/or Expand sales in foreign markets where your brand may have new opportunities.
Sounds as though you are confident that every dormant and dead brand can be revived. Are you?
Not in all cases. Dormant brands have “equity” or value. They are already familiar to the consumer base. As established names however, they are also carry pre-existing connotations. If these associations are based on positive attributes (e.g. innovation, quality, integrity, et cetera) then the brand name will convey these affiliations immediately, making them valuable. If the brands are more closely associated with the actual products and technology they provided, then they may seem outdated and irrelevant. In that case, the revival of brand name would do more harm than good. For someone looking to buy a dormant brand name, it would be wise to perform brand name testing to find out what type of associations that brand name has. Example: Does “Polaroid” conjure up “instant” and “innovative,” or does bring to mind “outdated cameras?”
But you still say, waking up a dead giant is better, cheaper and easier than creating a new blockbuster of a brand.
New brands provide a blank slate that allows a company to build a message and craft a story. But they are also expensive to market. An established, dormant brand name can provide a short cut; it contains that sought after familiarity and affiliations. The key questions would be: “Does the pre-existing brand equity match with the brand attributes and positioning of the proposed new company/product?”; and “Does the acquisition cost of the established brand name exceed the cost of promoting a new one?”
