Panty hose are making a return. Maybe not to your wardrobe, but it is to your living room. That’s right, after a 14-year recess L’eggs is making its TV advertising return. So after 14 years could you still remember that slogan? … Well, how’d you do? Great if you remembered, “Nothing beats a great pair of L’eggs.” Too bad that’s not what you’ll be hearing upon the comeback. According to Media Decoder blog, L’eggs wanted to “move on, contemporize and modernize” which includes a new slogan—”You’re in luck. You’re in L’eggs.”
So I’ll give it that modernizing hosiery wouldn’t be a very easy task. Even just the word “hosiery” screams old-fashioned. Nevertheless, I’m just not sure how well this rebranding will work. The goal is to reach women 18-34, so since I land in that demographic I think my opinion counts in saying the new slogan just doesn’t do it for me. Maybe I’m just more accustomed to the heritage of that original slogan and recognizing that brand when popping open one of those egg tops when I had to borrow my mom’s pantyhose for church. Plus, what kind of luck can a pair of tights bring? Bordering on the “lucky you” of Lucky Brand, are we? Oh, and what happened to the egg shaped box they used to come in? I didn’t see any of those with their new packaging. How is the “eggs” of L’eggs even relevant now?
In understanding my distaste for L’eggs rebranding, here are some things to consider when thinking about rebranding (after all it’s not all about generating awesome, new creative, but having a good reason for it, too).
- Understand who your current demographic is and what their perceptions of your current branding are (ie: market research). If you fail to research current public opinion, you may find yourself in a conundrum reminiscent of Old Coke vs New Coke. Maybe people love you just the way you were. This I believe is the downfall of the new L’eggs in replacing that classic slogan.
- If in step 1 you find that perceptions are not what you’d hoped, decide what you want your end users to get from your brand. Think Domino’s recent overhaul due to some unsavory research findings; they realized they needed people to not think of terrible quality when thinking of them.
- Generate new concepts based on your decision to refresh the interest of your current demographic or target a new one.
- Take your concepts to research.
- Launch the selected (based on findings in research) campaign… and pray.
- Research, yes again. You need to evaluate the outcomes of your campaign, and unfortunately it is this step that we sometimes so easily forget.
Now don’t think I’m being harsh on L’eggs and tell me what rebranding in the past has really had you all worked up. I can’t be the only one that finds it hard to let go of those old slogans.
At some point – in the long-forgotten past – I must have subscribed to Cosmopolitan magazine. I haven’t paid for the subscription in years, but the magazine continues to arrive each month – at every address I move to – complete with its blush-worthy coverlines and endless articles on how to be sexier, skinnier and otherwise happily scantily clad.
This is the content that I – and its 3 million monthly readers – have come to expect from that brand.
It’s not the kind of content just any brand could or should pull off.
Say, for example, the brand 66 million of us turn to for health advice: WebMD. We turn there to get plain-spoken explanations of diseases we’ve never heard of, advice on how to care for sprained ankles and sniffly noses, and – admit it – occasionally self diagnoses.
But, WebMD’s recent email campaigns haven’t been quite so healthy. No more wellness programs and seasonal flu avoiders; today, it’s sharing a new kind of advice:
I wonder if WebMD’s brand can survive this shift? Will consumers and healthcare providers be willing to dig through the wellness-lite content to get to the trusted health resources? Or will they move to a brand as serious as WebMD once was? QuantiaMD is one location betting on the latter. Today, they provide expert opinions by and for healthcare providers, but they’re set to open a consumer space soon.
I’ll be watching for more serious destinations to follow. When it comes to their health, people are looking for two things:
- To understand the experiences and decisions of people like them
- To have an expert’s view into what to expect
Neither of those can come from a watered-down brand where serious health is mired in salacious coverlines.
Universal communications that last (and last and last and last…)
There’s a time and place for everything and healthcare brands are no exception. The needs of the medical community are in constant flux and require our brands to continually adapt and evolve to meet ever-changing needs. Its easy for creative teams to get stuck in the insular world of the products they serve on a day-to-day (and night-to-night) basis, but in order to be a true brand liberator, we have to look above and beyond these worlds. Often, that means seeking inspiration from novels, magazines, TV or the far less regulated world of general consumer advertising – but that’s not enough…not nearly enough.
If we limit our source of inspiration (thereby limiting our thinking) to communicating in the world we live in today, we are forgetting about an enormous (and enormously rich) paradigm that can open our minds to provocative solutions for cutting through the ever-increasing clutter in the marketplace.
In 2006, the US Dept. of Energy was trying to deal with the problem of creating new universal warnings for radiation from nuclear waste. The waste is considered dangerous for 10,000 years and if you stop and think about it, well, there’s a really high likelihood that our civilization will be replaced (perhaps several times over) during that relatively large window of time. Take a look at this story and imagine the kind of mind expanding thought that this creative panel had to engage in to create the most universal, timeless communication they could dream up.
Just because your brand lives in a specific time and place today (or in the near future), you’re thinking isn’t stuck there. When you’re breaking down limits in the name of brand liberation, don’t forget to take down time. You can start by taking off your watch…
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