Marketing Briefing: Inside the anatomy of a successful brand comeback

By Kristina Monllos • October 1, 2024 •

This Marketing Briefing covers the latest in marketing for Digiday+ members and is distributed over email every Tuesday at 10 a.m. ET. More from the series →

Everyone loves a comeback story — but what makes a successful comeback?

As major brands plot returns to their former glory — by, say, switching up the C-suite leadership (like Nike recently did by appointing Elliott Hill to take the reins) or retooling a longstanding product strategy (Peloton is in the midst of this approach) — they’re looking to signal to the marketplace that they’re getting back on track. But just starting the process of getting back on track isn’t necessarily enough. To understand the process behind a brand comeback, Digiday asked four marketing and advertising executives about the typical steps a brand needs to take to mount a comeback.

Brands in need of a comeback have to first assess their position in the marketplace and be clear about what’s gone wrong, explained the executives, who noted that, while that may seem simple, admitting what’s gone wrong and looking for a path back to the zeitgeist is anything but. “The one big gift you’ve got is hindsight,” said Valerie Bounds, chief strategy and creative officer at creative agency Aurora, adding that the shop specializes in brand resurgence and offers a product for what they’ve deemed a “glow up.”

“You’ve probably been well-known and loved before, and there’s a reason that you’re not now,” said Bounds, when asked about charting the first steps of a comeback plan for a brand in need of one. “You need to find that [brand] love again. Go back to what made you famous and loved previously. Be honest about where it went wrong and why.”

That doesn’t mean reproducing products or strategies from when things worked, but rather figuring out what made a brand successful in the first place. For example, if a brand was previously known and beloved for its innovation but rested on its laurels, it has to correct that and reinvigorate that innovation. The path back will vary by brand, as what brands are loved for and what problems brands deal with also vary.

“They [not only] have to make sure they understand exactly who their audience and customers are but that both their core product offering or service and who they are and who they stand for as a brand are super well aligned,” said Chris Mele, managing partner at innovation consultancy Siberia. Without doing so, “you’re really just plugging holes and putting band-aids” on problem areas which may “find temporary improvement” but won’t hold up in the long term, Mele added.

After diagnosing what’s gone wrong to lead a brand to be in a position where it needs to plot a comeback, companies then typically need to not only implement strategies that will help them get back to where they once were — i.e. reinvigorate innovation if that’s what they were known for — but empower employees and internal culture as well. Employees are often the first evangelists for a brand, explained the execs, who noted that finding a way to get employees on board again is a sign that a comeback is headed in the right direction.

“Your employees are living and breathing your brand every day and they have been along this journey, pre-comeback, mid-comeback and post-comeback,” said Anthony Riva, executive director of insights and analytics at Landor, adding that getting employee buy-in on the comeback can be a first step to communicating that comeback to the outside world, as brands aren’t “forcing the issues” and “you’re making sure that your employees are actually putting the brand into the real world.”

Addressing the issues that led to the need for a comeback in the first place will depend on those issues. If new leadership is needed, if a brand needs to reinvigorate its offerings according to current trends, if it needs to find a new audience, all of those issues will be addressed in different ways. The problems and the severity of those problems will dictate the timeline for a comeback. But once the problem is addressed, communicating clearly to consumers that a brand has made the necessary changes is key.

“Ad campaigns are [almost] the last piece of the puzzle,” said Mele, noting that when he previously worked on Domino’s comeback, the pizza chain changed its sauce recipe and its clear communication of that change made all the difference. “Communications or marketing come after you really analyze who your audience is and how you serve them, what you stand for and how your core product service offers, you get back to that and then you get back to communicating to people about that. But if all you’re doing is communicating and you haven’t transformed the core of how your business operates [that won’t work].”

While marketers are just one part of the whole for brands, they often have access to data and insights that can help show the C-Suite what’s gone wrong and inform them how to fix it. Making sure marketers have a seat at that table to share data and insights will help with a brand’s comeback and inform the communication strategy once that’s ready, noted the execs.

“Marketers need to be willing to swing big: To challenge sacred cows, especially old habits and familiar success formulas,” said Mike Stefaniak, chief strategy officer at Hanson Dodge, noting that the shop helped craft Stanley’s plan to target a millennial and Gen-Z audience to help grow the brand outside of its traditional core. “And if you’re going after a new and younger audience, don’t rest until you’ve uncovered insights that give new consumers permission to fall in love with your legacy brand.”

3 Questions with Michelle Peterson, CMO at jewelry brand Kendra Scott

Kendra Scott is tapping into sports. Why? What are the business goals around that?

There’s this great opportunity to bring sports and fashion together. … We have a consumer who very much wears jewelry to drive her own confidence, but often also wears jewelry to show her tribe, and that’s what sports and fashion allow her to do. We support the mom who’s cheering on her kid’s middle school team to college sports to partnerships that we have with the NFL. Really, our goal is to bring in new consumers and reach those new audiences, and ensure that our brand remains relevant and is constantly a part of culture, which really, sports allows us to do.

How is the brand getting in front of sports fans?

One of the things we always think about in our campaign is how to start connecting with consumers locally and socially before we then move to more national, scalable vehicles [or marketing strategies]. We partnered with the Dallas Cowboys for a while and this year we launched a new collaboration with them that has been doing incredibly well. We kicked off the Giants’ 100th season this year with them and gifted about 600 pieces of our jewelry. Then we had a multi-city game day tour where we did about 15 pop-ups and five or six scavenger hunts with different colleges like Baylor and Alabama. That was all about reaching the Gen Z.

Sports marketing is gaining traction with luxury brands, including Kendra Scott, David Yurman and others. Talk to me about why luxury brands and sports makes sense. Are you just following trends?

It’s not a flash in the pan [marketing moment]. Our consumer knows that we’ve had this longstanding relationship with the Cowboys. And that applies for high school sports. We have been popping up at high school sports for years, helping schools raise money for their PTA [Parent Teacher Association] or whatever charity that is important to them. Our consumer has seen that. — Kimeko McCoy

By the numbers

As the presidential election looms this November, brands are increasingly pushing for apolitical influencers with the hope that they can avoid public scrutiny. Still, most influencers plan to share their political views online during this year’s election, according to recent research from IZEA Worldwide, a company that focuses on influencer marketing and content creation. See key figures from the report below:

82% of influencers plan to share their political views online during the 2024 election.
52% of social media users believe that political content from influencers contributes to their understanding of political issues.
46% of social media users ages 18-60 have changed their political opinion based on an influencer’s content. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the week

“I was a naive, optimistic, young ad tech person, hoping to stick around and be part of Oracle.”

— a former Oracle employee, when asked to remember what it was like at the company for a piece detailing its rise, stall and fall as the doors close on Oracle Advertising.