The Heritage Igniter Approach

A redesign can ignite a stagnant heritage brand, but only if it's strategic, not just a facelift. Many heritage brands won't admit this, but stagnation isn't stable. It's decline in slow motion. 

I see three camps right now. You can see them everywhere, from Pepsi to Kraft, but not all redesigns are created equal.  

Camp 1: The facelift crowd. 

New logo, cleaner packaging, fresh buzz. But they don't change the proposition or the product. Nothing actually shifts. The redesign fades. Sales go back to baseline.

Camp 2: The fearful. 

Terrified of losing current customers, so they stand still. But here's the trap, if you're standing still, your competitors aren't. Your consumer isn't. Your shelf is shrinking. 

Camp 3: The ones actually winning. 

They diagnose why they stalled in the first place. They do it before it's too late. The window to act matters. They know what to keep. They know what to kill. Then they move fast.

The brands rebounding aren't doing makeovers. They're being honest about what still resonates. And then they genuinely evolve. And they're doing it while they still have equity to work with.

If you're stagnant, the question isn't whether to evolve. It's how fast you can diagnose and move.