In the fall of 2023, something curious happened. Americans went, in masses, to see a movie about the man who steered the creation of the atomic bomb. But what was more surprising? Twice as many people went to see a movie about a toy doll.

Yes, Barbie was the flick, and she went on to earn more than $1 billion for Warner Brothers and her Mattel bosses.

How did a doll that had been around for decades, and bore more than its fair share of criticism, break through culture in such a monumental way?

By going back to the beginning. Barbie holds many lessons for legacy brands, but chief among them is the need to identify, and relentlessly communicate, the reason your brand emerged in the first place.

For legacy brands looking to adapt for new generations, the core of their path forward is lurking in plain sight.

Re-discovering your purpose

Start-ups, DTC and house labels all threaten the once-assured dominance of legacy players. These alternatives offer something that legacy brands cannot: a sense of newness, convenience and sometimes lower prices.

But legacy brands hold something deeper: stories. A great story, whether told by the brand or remembered by the customer, can form a long-term bond that’s very difficult to break. Our Brand Joy Lab has found that brand fandom is built, in part, by factors like tradition and nostalgia.

But when channeling decades’ worth of stories, it’s crucial on what is truly meaningful—and what you can move forward without. Some of the best legacy brands have drawn from their pasts to evolve in new and unexpected ways.

• Kennedy Space Center – After the end of Space Shuttle launches, this storied space park had to reinvent itself. The “Look Up” campaign was born, celebrating the joy of awe from past space exploration to excite people about the future.
• Levi’s – The 2024 campaign, “Live in Levi’s,” was built on audience research, championing stories from “doers” who innovate and do things their way, positioning itself as a brand that embraces pushing culture forward while staying true to its roots as a work wear brand.
• Old Spice – Traditionally, Old Spice has had an older male audience, so to break through to a younger demographic, the brand created the engaging “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign that featured quick transitions, humor and grand imagery while incorporating age-old assets like the signature whistle.

Each of these examples shows how a legacy brand updated its original purpose to serve a new generation. For brands searching for relevance, the secret may lie in your own archives or past marketing campaigns. What worked, and where did the magic stem from?

But how do you make these connections?

Updating your brand story for today’s environment

A brand’s purpose may be durable, but the way you communicate will change as media and trends come and go.

To adapt your messaging, don’t just chase the most recent social media trends or popular fads. Go to the source of your brand’s relevance: the people who use your products.

Social listening tools can give you thorough reports of the ways that people discuss your products online. But even searching Reddit threads and asking some of your core customers can reveal fundamental truths about how your brand is seen.

Take Stanley, a legacy tool brand whose insulated tumblers built an unexpected following among Millennial and Gen Z consumers. Seeing this behavior, they leaned in and adapted to current trends, releasing limited edition designs and collaborating with influencers—to the tune of a 275% increase in revenue.

While the brand’s tenets—durability, dependability—remained unchanged, the ways they communicated those values changed with the times.

Leveraging your product’s emotional rewards

In the 1880s, a pharmacist in Atlanta created an elixir to ease the pain from a saber wound he’d received in the Civil War. His goal was relief, but the result was one of the most joyful brands known today: Coca-Cola.

Of course, the brand that grew from Pemberton’s lab has nothing to do with pain relief—or sweetness, fizziness, even refreshment. Coke is all about the happiness that people get from drinking it. Every single piece of marketing with the red can shows the consumer that opening a can of Coke will release twelve ounces of joy right into the body.

There are lessons here for every product—yes even B2B, insurance and death care. If you can get your audience to feel the joy that your product brings, you’ll connect on a much deeper level.

For every functional benefit of a product, there’s an emotional reward for the consumer. Tapping into that outcome will transform a product from a commodity to an essential. From disposable to indispensable. Take Barbie: Mattel’s platform suggests that while playing with a doll is fun for girls, imagining themselves as women in different professions achieves the end goal of empowerment.

Perhaps your emotional benefit won’t inspire a $1 billion movie, but it can inspire loyalty and margin protection. PETERMAYER’s Brand Joy Lab has found strong ties between the joy that people derive from brands and their intent to purchase them.

Taking risk and embracing innovation

There comes a point when, no matter how strong your benefit or deep your story, a legacy brand will need to pivot to stay relevant. Either the market has changed consumer behaviors, or your product does not fit the needs of your customers.

Back in 2010, Domino’s did something shocking. The international pizza chain admitted what customers had been saying for a while: The pizza was bad. In a major evolution, the company altered its product to improve the taste and owned up to its mistakes.

The result was the legendary “Pizza Turnaround” campaign, which drove 22 consecutive quarters of sales growth after years of stagnation. The secret was not just in admitting that their product had faltered. Domino’s changed its strategy to provide an emotionally driven hook, rather than the gimmicks—like 30-minute delivery or your money back—that had driven its marketing in the years before the turnaround.

Not all legacy brands need to go out and say their product is crap, though. But when the benefits of your offering no longer align with the needs of your customer, it’s time for some brutal honesty of what to cut out of your strategy and what to add.

Listening to your base, staying true to your purpose and leveraging emotional connections will lead to the innovations that your brand needs to make to break through again.

Working well with an agency

Working with an agency can provide an outside voice to help guide your brand to relevance again, and there’s plenty of value to be found in that.

But come to the table vulnerable and ready for change.

The best client-agency relationships are true partnerships, especially for brands needing to break stagnation. A great agency partner will bring you closer to the consumer you’re trying to reach and give you actionable ways to move them. Not all agencies are created equal, though. Before you hire one, consider asking these questions to understand whether they’re really prepared to help you:

• How do you stay up on current trends?
• How do they generate consumer insights?
• How do they connect to audiences?
• Have you handled a brand with a long history before?

If they demonstrate that they are able to check those boxes, they may be part of the solution to grow your legacy brand.

Where to start

1. Go back to the beginning: Understand the true value your brand brings and use it as a laser focus for your evolution.
2. Listen up: Find your customers and understand how they’re interacting with your brand. You’ll learn the most from the people using your products.
3. Embrace evolution: Facing stagnation, the riskiest thing to do is nothing. Use your purpose and consumer insights to innovate your communications or product offerings.
4. Get emotional: Think about how your product affects your customer’s life beyond its practical benefits. Did Domino’s succeed just by adding more garlic to their crust? No. They won by admitting mistakes and asking customers to forgive—and try that pizza again.