By Alyson O’Mahoney, Executive VP/Partner
If you’re launching a new brand or product, the natural inclination may be to announce and support it via Facebook, matching the newness of the brand with the coolness of this technology to market products, and that’s almost expected. However, I believe that older, heritage brands – perhaps those with brand managers who may not feel their brand is new or cool enough to go social – have an even bigger opportunity for resurgence in this space for the sole reason Facebook exploded to begin with. Think about it….tens of millions of people go on Facebook each day to connect – with old friends from their high school football team, grammar school crushes, sorority sisters, past work colleagues, you name it. That’s the primary role of Facebook, ultimately, and it allows us to connect with what is ultimately the history of our relationships. In this space, we are more apt to friend/trust someone we haven’t spoken to in 30 years (like a heritage brand that, say, grandma always had in her house or mom used when you were a kid – something you connect with from the past that you trust) than we would an actual stranger (say, like a new brand that we need to trust first).
Facebook may be a new channel of communication, but it really taps into and reconnects us with our trusted histories (let’s face it, we avoid friending the crazy old boyfriend!). Products from our past – say that remind you of childhood or something special about how your mom – are trusted.
So, if heritage brands, even with small budgets, began positioning themselves as old friends, while at the same time delivering new content to freshen up their perspective to new, younger consumers, old friends could surely become new again.