Move fast and test things: How legacy brands can reclaim their heritage

I’m a runner and a golfer, so my social algorithms are finely tuned not only to bearded ultrarunners taking on Moab and PGA tour pros easily cranking 300+ yard drives but also plenty of brand advertising. 

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By Mike Perry, Chief Creative Officer & Founder at Tavern

You have newcomers like Satisfy and Bandit pushing a running-tech-meets-fashion aesthetic (you know that’s the case when you can buy your running gear on SSENSE). At the same time, Malbon and Manors Golf style their athletes in classic golf fits pulled straight out of the 90s and 00s with a light tech flair, all of which remind me that I have expensive hobbies. Of course, what I’m really seeing while I’m scrolling are trendy startups flooding the sportswear market as they vie for relevance against established legacy brands. 

And these legacy brands are making it far too easy for them to win.

And here's the thing. Those legacy brands? They have a genuine problem on their hands and are losing ground. We're talking about the same ones–and you know who they are–that possess a Fort Knox-level vault full of heritage, but instead of swimming through all this gold, everything feels stagnant and tired.

But it's that same heritage that can save them. By tapping into what made them great in the first place—but reimagining its meaning and aesthetic for a contemporary audience—brands can maintain their relevance in today's ever-changing cultural landscape, digital and otherwise. This balance of trendiness with timelessness can further future-proof these brands and cement their legacy.

The brands in this predicament find themselves stuck for a couple of reasons. For starters, the folks at the adult table aren't exactly known for being agile, and they're failing to keep up with the pace of culture. That's what happens when you get too big; you're buried under heaps of bureaucracy. They also ride the 20-year cyclical waves of cool, with classic sneaker silhouettes rediscovered and capitalized upon. But if you want to be cool, you need to be relevant in all areas all of the time, not just when a younger generation raids the attic. Instead of focusing entirely on one demographic or catering to the middle of the road, they need outreach and innovation directed at new generations that will inherently influence the older generations. It takes a while for a trend to hit those mature market segments, but it almost always announces the death of relevancy. It's why when you go to any country club patio, you'll find every golfer from the age of 45 to 65 wearing the same color palette. 

Those are the same folks wearing skinny jeans and golf pants so tight you have to leave your phone in the golf cart because it won't fit inside your back pocket, if that gives you any idea how dated all of this now looks.

Legacy brands have vast archives of creative inspiration uniquely ownable to them alone, be it past products, gorgeous print campaigns, and other creative ephemera. For myself, when I work on a brand that has lost its way at Tavern, we make a point of revisiting that ownable heritage, reviving design from their past, and retooling it for a contemporary audience. We call it modern heritage. It's precisely how legacy brands can capitalize on contemporary cultural shifts in a way that feels authentic to their brand but allows them to balance trendy and timeless. 

That doesn't mean simply raiding the archives and looking for what's beautiful, revelatory, or retro-kitschy. It's about taking what's everlasting and making it contemporary. Look at what JKR did with Budweiser. They took the beer brand back to its visual heyday of the '60s and '70s, not to make retro cans but to make it last forever. You want timeless, not relics, and you have to modernize what made the branding great in the first place. Without modernity, you're just making a collage of the greatest hits. And, as much as I speak highly of Satisfy and Malbon, legacy brands should just let the startups be trendy–trends don't last. Chasing trends for the sake of chasing trends is a fool's errand. 

Of course, recognizing what’s working for those trendy companies and learning from that can catapult your brand if you can capitalize on it–essentially, be the second mouse to the cheese.

Best of all, this is something actionable the big players can do without a whole lot of initial spend. Do a collab and challenge the status quo. New Balance had occupied a place between your dad's faithful weekend grasscutters and normcore for years. However, when they started working with Teddy Santis and Aimé Leon Dore (ALD), he unearthed the late 1980s basketball shoe and reimagined it for a contemporary audience. Shortly after, New Balance realized they had a hit on their hands as each limited release sold out immediately. Now, Santis is the creative director for New Balance Made in America, and under his supervision, his design ethos influences the entirety of the brand world. 

The critical point here is to not make it a one-off. Move fast and test things, experiment, and see what works–you're using marketing to your advantage and learning from it. In the case of ALD, they modernized, and that collaboration bled across the brand's DNA. It wasn't something purely done for the sake of a press release. You're steering the ship in new, exciting ways; these aren't just cute ideas that will live for a day on Hypebeast. You must consistently test and learn and innovate. And that's how to grow and cultivate an audience.

We learn from the past so that we can inform the future. It's precisely why established sports brands need to hedge against trendy startups and shift their strategy from chasing what's hot for a week to championing timelessness. Because once you get to iconic–which is no easy feat–and you can do that with a fair amount of consistency, you can continuously flex alongside culture without losing what made you so distinctive in the first place.