Editor's note: Dennis Crowley is president and CEO of Brand Engineers, a Teaneck, N.J., research firm. This article appeared in the March 28, 2011, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

Iconic brands are in the enviable position of having developed long, meaningful emotional bonds with consumers. However, like in any lasting relationship, you have to constantly work on adapting to change as you grow. Every marketer plans to have their brand and target audience evolve together; unfortunately this is often not a reality. As in the case of Old Spice, which I will examine shortly, the long-term survival of many brands depends on their ability to rejuvenate itself and make themselves relevant to new target audiences. 

So, how exactly do you take a brand that most people associate with their grandparents and reinvent it for a new, younger audience? When considering repositioning a brand, brand managers must ensure that the new positioning meets three criteria: 1) it must be relevant to the customer's frame of reference; 2) the brand must have the customer's permission for the new positioning; and 3) ultimately the brand must deliver on the promise of the positioning.

Zone of credibility

To develop the most effective positioning, marketers must first look at the functional and emotional needs of the target customers, as well as the situation in which these needs occur. Understanding this reference point and how your brand is related to it is critical in determining the viability of any positioning opportunity.

At Brand Engineers we refer to this as the zone of credibility. We believe repositioning a brand outside the zone of credibility creates confusion for customers and ultimately dooms the repositioning effort. To best define this zone of credibility marketers must understand the customer's perception of the brand and recognize how far the brand can be moved while maintaining the customer's belief in the brand's ability to deliver.

A logical link

Ensuring that the new position falls within the zone of credibility is essential but not the only consideration that must be made. Equally important is to create a logical link between a brand's current and desired positions. Because marketers are, in essence, asking customers to think about the brand in a new way, customers must view the new position as a logical and acceptable extension of the brand. To achieve this, marketers must build the necessary links from customers' current perceptions to the perceptions they wish to establish with the repositioning effort.

Live up to its new promise

Finally, a repositioned brand must live up to its new promise. To earn a permanent position in your audience's mind and wallet, your customers must feel that your brand achieves what they desire from it. The only real way a brand can have a long, successful life cycle is for it to deliver on the promise of the positioning. This is important to keep in mind when repositioning a brand since trust is hard to earn in our over-communicated world but very easy to break - and critically important when working with an already successfully positioned brand.

Old Spice: A case study

If a strategy is carefully developed, repositioning a brand can be a key element in unlocking its full potential. An example of a brand that has reinvented itself is Old Spice, which has been around since 1937. The name alone was enough to conjure up the image of the aftershave bottle in your grandfather's medicine cabinet. Certainly, brand managers at Proctor & Gamble had their work cut out when they acquired the brand in 1990. Nevertheless, P&G marketers recognized an opportunity that would allow Old Spice to appeal to new audiences, namely young men, without alienating its core.

First, they turned what many saw as the brand's main weakness - longevity - into a strength. Their new strategy was enveloped in the slogan "Experience Is Everything." It recognized the long existence of the brand while allowing the brand team the freedom to push the envelope in its tactics. This very masculine brand could have tried the route of the sports-oriented Right Guard or the womanizing of Axe Body Spray. Instead, it acknowledged its longevity and managed to intertwine experience and masculinity through an assertive, straightforward and edgy manner.

The whistling sailor Old Spice featured in its previous advertising was outdated. Its new ads featured a straight-shooting, confident man who guarantees the efficacy of Old Spice deodorant. This strategic shift has been wildly successful. Old Spice became the leading deodorant and antiperspirant for men and has expanded the product offering extensively. Having successfully built market share with its new audience, it currently uses the tagline "Spice Things Up."

Stayed true

The marketers of Old Spice stayed true to the three main considerations of repositioning a brand. Old Spice remained relevant to the customer's frame of reference; gained customer permission to update this old-fashioned product into a new, stylish brand; and was able to deliver on the fresh, effective and confident promise the new positioning set out.