Brands Create Customers

It pays to keep an eye on legacy brands, because they can create the kind of brand vacuum that spells market opportunity for disruptor brands. Simply put, legacy brands stand tall on feet of clay. They’re fragile because they don’t cultivate the resilient customer connections that make for enduring brand strength. They may have a boat-load of high-drama symbols and a spiffy showcase sheen, but on the real terrain where customers run they don’t get much traction—and a brand vacuum is born.

Legacy brands defined

Here’s how we define legacy brands in our New Brand Glossary:

Legacy Brands
Backward-facing brands that can suck the future from a company. Legacy brands are predicated on top-down, command and control models which position the customer as a passive commodity, purely to be sold to. Legacy brands are vulnerable to competitors who create active partnerships with customers to innovate on brand, elevating customers from “commodities” to value co-creators.

Lack of brand value creates the brand vacuum

Because legacy brands focus primarily on themselves, and because they speak down to customers, they find it increasingly difficult to create new brand value. The more exuberant and ethereal their self-styled spectacle, the more they create a brand vacuum that others are sure to fill. The vacuum is a brand value void.

Icon brands take note

Companies with legacy brands are vulnerable in their markets, and on the M&A front. If your task is to husband a brand that rarely listens to customers because “icons don’t need ears,” be forewarned.

Photo: salsaboy, flickr

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 6:42 am and is filed under Definitions, Brand Value. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.