Digital media may seem like a chimaera for legacy brands, but it really isn’t. As counterintuitive as that sounds, let us put that suggestion to the test.
Legacy brands have an advantage that emergent brands do not. They do not need to be re-defined for a new generation. New media is nothing new. For every generation, there is some media that just arrived. Even for the digital native, there are transitions that have taken place in their lifetime.
Dedicated websites gave way to discussion groups, and Orkut and Myspace came and went. Search engine advertising went from impressions on busy Yahoo homepages to trickles on a Google search results page. And now we have a plethora of Social Media platforms and we await what AI brings in the immediate future.
Media changes, new generations sprout up, and marketing strategies change. The brand does not. For most legacy brands, the very elements that make them vulnerable are the ones that help them sail forth into uncharted waters with a minimum of resistance.
Legacy brands can leverage digital media in ways that emergent brands cannot. An astute set of strategies can adapt the brand to a fast-paced environment and multiple targeted messages.
Paradoxically, legacy brands have an easier time navigating the digital media landscape. But digital media needs to be understood and used as the dynamic toolkit it is. The platform is rarely the obstacle in most cases. It is the internal managerial struggle to hold on to older ideas. Some brands do better than others. Brand delivery is a greater issue here than messaging.
This is why Encyclopedia Britannica is no longer the foremost encyclopedia brand. Barnes & Noble is no longer the world’s largest bookseller and Thomas Cook has fallen by the wayside. They have all been superseded by brands that understood the digital form, its advantages and capabilities. The urge to cling to an old idiom has been one in too many established brands.
Let’s talk about a brand like Parle-G. Thinking conventionally, this would be a nightmare to handle. The brand has no fixed age profile, gender preference, demographic, or psychographic bracket. Broadcast media and print can only handle one message at a time. Digital media has no such qualms.
With a deft hand on the marketing tiller, a team can micro-target demographics, and deliver a different message to children, parents, teens and college-goers, the middle-aged and older set. Emerging AI is still in its nascency, but I imagine it won’t be long before it can find individual customers and deliver a message that is crafted exclusively for them.
Everybody eats chocolate. Men, women, young, old, urban, provincial, and with whatever money they have in their pocket. Cadbury knows this. And their digital marketing team is on the ball. That is why their ‘Families Reunited’ resonates so well with everybody.
Similarly, brands like Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, The Guardian and others hold their own while relatively younger brands fumble. Think about it. When did you hear of a brand other than Lego Command a movie franchise and thereafter, spin-off into Internet shorts, fan fiction, user-generated content and engagement on a gargantuan scale?
Legacy brands have the advantage of not having to define themselves constantly. But they can take a leaf out of the pages of Pepsi or Levi’s. These are older than common memory. But they do not act like legacy brands. Nobody thinks of their grandpa wearing blue jeans in the 1960s when they think of Levi’s. They are always new, always current.
The point is not to think of legacy brands as ‘old’. It’s about thinking of them as established and already at the starting block for the sprint. It re-wires the marketing mind to think positively and make the most of the brand equity that has been built for decades.
This article is penned by Vinod Kunj, Founder & CCO of Thought Blurb Communications.
Disclaimer: The article features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the stance of the publication.
