Vintage is the new trend. And not only in the fashion industry. Some well-known brands found it interesting to relaunch or modernize some of their old best sellers, and so do we!
The concept Some brands implemented a specific branding strategy: bringing back to life some of the favorite products of our grandparents’ or parents’ childhood. Risky bet you said?
What’s the point? What is the point of investing money on forgotten or old products? The explanation stands in a single word: nostalgia! By relaunching a product, brands do not only recreate a recipe but make a whole world revived in people’s minds. The brand touches directly the consumer and makes him plunge back into its childhood. He is willing to buy the product just to reopen a whole period of his early years and revive some cherished memories. The key point for the brand is to build an emotional connection with the consumer.
Two ways of doing so can be mentioned:
Recreate a product that is no longer commercialized
Improve the recipe and modernize the image of a still existing product
In the first case, the brand takes advantage of the disappearance of a product by relaunching it, playing on the “grandmother’s recipe” dimension, which is often associated to quality and authenticity. Imitating yesteryear products is a relevant marketing strategy, as it inspires people’s confidence.
We can wonder about the target of those old/new products. The brand initially targets a specific category of age, meaning the person who used to consume the product as a child. And over time, the target can be gradually widening to reach more consumers.
The Malakoff chocolate bar is an adequate example. It was created in 1885 in France but disappeared in the 90s. It was finally relaunched in 2013 by Romain Chollier, a French chocolate maker, who worked on the original recipe during 8 months before finding the perfect formula meeting today’s standards. Romain opened a shop dedicated to this yesteryear product and developed its business by imagining a bunch of Malakoff ranges (black, milk, white chocolate, caramel, mint, sugarless…).
The second technic, consisting in improving and modernizing a product’s recipe and image, is very common. Many examples can be mentioned, such a Treets, now called M&Ms, Nuts, now known under the name of Snickers or Raiders, now labeled Twix. Based on an old recipe, brands managed to create a modern version of their best sellers. This is what we call “rebranding”.
Both technics result in interesting branding and marketing strategies that boost sales, mainly by playing on consumer’s emotions.
A famous case of rebranding: Raider became Twix
You must all know the famous twin chocolate barres Twix. A perfect combination of chocolate and caramel, which a touch of crispy biscuit. Well, it was first produced and commercialized under the name “Raider”. The group Mars Incorporated proceeded to a name change in 1991, to modernize the product and give it a more international dimension, in association to the general identity of the group.
But to keep the Raider’s lovers happy, the recipe, the slogan and the gold and red packaging remained the same. Of course, people were expecting some explanations on this name change. Many communication campaigns were deployed, especially through TV spot in France, as it was the most modern and efficient way of impacting people in the early 90s. The slogan of the communication campaign was “It’s the same, only the name changes”. In Germany, it looked like “Raider becomes Twix, nothing else is changing”.
This marketing actions did not reach the brand’s expectations, it was a sort of failure, people badly perceived that name change. People thought it was only a marketing technic to launch a falsely new product and generate sales. But still, after some efforts of adaptation, Twix remains one of the most famous and consumed chocolate barre in the world. Today, many ranges of Twix exist according to the country: black chocolate, white chocolate, peanut butter, orange, coffee, ice cream, mini size…
In 2015, the group Mars Incorporated launched a limited range of products under the old name, Raider, but only in Netherlands. The recipe remains exactly the same. It was made to “meet the urge of many consumers” said the spokesperson of Mars Incorporated Netherlands, but we can easily guess it is rather a way to create a buzz. So, back to the oldies for real?