Every established brand wants to be
relevant. Especially when it has been
around for a while.
It has history. Recognition, loyal
customers, iconic products and an
archive full of stories younger brands
would kill for. We tend to call that
heritage.
And in brand strategy, heritage is often
treated almost automatically as an
advantage. But I'm increasingly
questioning that assumption. Because
heritage belongs to the company.
Cultural relevance doesn't.
A company can own its history and its
archive. It can preserve them and
celebrate them. What it cannot do, is to
decide whether a new generation will
care at all.
I started to wonder: Why does a sandal
associated with comfort and rather
unfashionable people suddenly become
one of the most desirable objects in
fashion? Why does a subculture around
old sports cars become so powerful that
the manufacturer eventually starts
adopting its codes? Can we deliberately
take an established German luggage
manufacturer and push it into
contemporary culture?
And what happens when a 50-year-old
sofa suddenly becomes more culturally
relevant than the brand that makes it?
In this issue we will learn that there is no
single playbook behind these stories. In
one case, relevance seems to happen
almost accidentally. In another, it
emerges outside the company and is
eventually embraced by it. Sometimes it
is deliberately orchestrated. And
sometimes one iconic product develops
a cultural life almost of its own.
Which raised a bigger question:
Can brands actually create cultural
relevance? Or can they only recognise,
enable and amplify it?
I wanted to look at four very different
cases:
Birkenstock.
Porsche.
Rimowa.
Ligne Roset's Togo.
and ON Clouds
I wanted to understand where their
renewed relevance actually came from,
what the companies did when it
appeared - and what we might learn
from it. Because perhaps the biggest risk
for a heritage brand isn't losing its
history.
It's believing that history alone gives
people a reason to care.
