With stints at brands including Rescue Remedy, Dove and Bed Head, Helen Coupe has learned a lot about how to grow and evolve legacy brands without breaking what made them great to begin with.
A brand’s legacy can take many forms: it might be a history of sustainable manufacturing; a willingness to push the status quo; or simply a reputation for brilliant, effective products. Whatever it is, it’s a company’s bread and butter.
At ASK US FOR IDEAS, we’ve helped a lot of these brands find agency partners, and we know the challenge is maintaining a legacy while bringing onboard new audiences, or products, or platforms.
So we asked CMO Helen Coupe – who we met when we introduced Nelsons to an agency partner to bring Rescue Remedy to a new audience on TikTok – how heritage brands can keep hold of what makes them special while adapting to a changing world and audience.
- Emma TuckerWhat actually constitutes a legacy brand? Is it age? Status? The amount of money you’re making every year? All of these things?
Helen CoupeWhat I immediately jump to is what you’re giving to society because, conventionally, a legacy is that gift you leave somebody when you go. And having worked with a lot of founders, I think they feel the importance of leaving a legacy for the next generation.
There’s classic big legacy, famous brands like Patagonia – that’s an incredible legacy, the vision of the founder and the determination and the decisions they’ve made. Then you’ve got Dyson, which is built around that dissatisfaction and a feeling that the way hoovering was done was illogical; I love that he brought a new technological legacy to Britain. And then there’s Dove, and the Dove difference; that’s a brand that was launched in 1957, bringing together cleansing and moisturisation, and that’s an amazing legacy.
- ETWhat sorts of challenges, or maybe opportunities, do you face when you’re a company that has this clear thread of a legacy? Is it harder?
HCI don’t think it’s harder, but like all ‘bigger’ brands they have the challenge of navigating the brand lifecycle and that eternal question to stay relevant, stay top of mind and bring new users to your brand, year-in and year-out.
And when you have a certain amount of scale, you implicitly have an organisation to support: you’ve got to pay salaries, you’ve got to keep the line running, you’ve got to take care of your working capital, you’ve got to continue to achieve your scale plus a little bit of growth. There’s that pressure to grow or die.
- ETIf things are working and the brand’s ticking over, why change anything?
HCThe danger is that big legacy brands rest on their laurels. That’s almost the most dangerous and difficult place to do breakthrough creativity, because everybody’s satisfied and everyone’s paid and everyone’s comfortable.
You see a lot of comfortable creative wallpaper, and it’s particularly rife in social where there’s a bit of UGC, and great product photography that iconises and honours the products. And that’s ok; if you have an established audience, a certain amount of them are going to see it and be reassured and reminded.
The challenge is finding and working with people that really genuinely love the brand and want to deliver through the brand and category and serve the consumer.
It’s about weighing up how much of a risk you want to take, and asking how that risk lives within the legacy you’ve already built.
Helen Coupe
- ETIf you’re leading a brand that has a lot at stake, how do you push beyond that comfortable creative work and into something a bit riskier?
HCHC: It’s about weighing up how much of a risk you want to take, and asking how that risk lives within the legacy you’ve already built. Does it push it enough so you can continue that legacy, or are you taking things out of the comfort zone?
And I think you have to align internally with shareholders, with the board, with founders, with the leaders of the organisation. I would never issue an external partner agency a brief without that alignment. I’ve done safe work and I’ve done revolutionary work, and you need that alignment.
- ETI wanted to talk about the relationship between brands and agencies, particularly as you’ve done a lot of selecting and onboarding of external teams. How do you set up that relationship?
HCThey need to love the brand as much as I do. If they don’t love the brand, or the product, then go somewhere else. You want partners who aren’t just doing it in a quest for awards – they genuinely get it, and they want to make a difference too.
And then you need to frame the problem in a really compelling brief that empowers everybody with great creativity. You need to crystallise what it means, right now, to win in this market. You need to get that cracked, before you bring on an agency partner. Empower them with great thinking, and you’ll get great thinking back.
- ETYou’ve worked with several brands that have significant histories – and a well-established consumer base. What advice would you share from that experience of balancing legacy and creativity?
HCPlease just work on brands you love; you get better work from that point of passion. I always live in the space of my brands, and I only take jobs where I feel like: I can dig this, I want this, I love this brand. I think if you love the brand you’ll naturally respect the heritage and understand the legacy, and can be bolder about fitting it into the now.
And that’s the second piece of advice: be brave, be creative. We live in a transparent society. You can just delete stuff off TikTok. Someone might have taken a screengrab, but we move so fast that nobody will care what that says in three weeks’ time. Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton is always my inspiration here: outrageously bold, outrageously different from Louis Vuitton, and yet has laid the path for LV’s current era.
Lastly, I’m a big fan of the ‘slow quick quick slow’ rhythm, for fast but effective brand development. Slow – in terms of making sure you’ve got the right brief and everyone internally aligned to it. I don’t like to impart a half-baked brief to an agency partner, even in a new pitch situation. Then quick, in terms of finding an idea and a team that can deliver against your objective. Creativity has its moment, and what’s right for a brand, right now, isn’t always, especially in our fast and free-flowing, globally transparent and connected culture.
