It occurred to me as I sat, transfixed by the latest Levi’s television commercials, “Go Forth”, of the challenge marketers of established brands face in keeping relevant in a marketplace that prizes everything “new”. Levi’s is a case study in how a 150 year old brand with a substantially unchanged product can continually make itself essential to each generation.

Marketers of established brands are often tasked with making something familiar seem new in order to reinvigorate consumer interest. “Old” is a stigma we avoid at all costs. If you can’t reformulate your product, ala a breakfast cereal, what can you do to make it new?  One consideration is to embrace your position and appeal to the “heritage”, “genuine”, “beloved” nature of your brand. That might manifest in a position of confidence and comfort. Or, along the same line, appeal to the “retro” funkiness it might project and make it newly “hip”.

You might also reinvent how your product is used, repackage it or align it with something that your customers care about. 

Another approach is to find the essence of the brand that is timeless and refocus it into the context of what matters today. Levi’s new campaign does that brilliantly and ironically. The hip new spots are built around the century-old poetry of Walt Whitman, used as the “battle-cry” for the new generation. The soundtrack of the first spot even uses a wax cylinder recording believed to be audio of Whitman himself reading from his poem “America.” The second spot in the campaign employs a recording of an actor reading Whitman’s “Pioneers! O Pioneers!”

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