The viability of heritage marketing

Amelia Duggan

Marketers know that brand loyalty is partly based upon passing brand equity from generation to generation and often leverage that heritage with customers.

Brand loyalty is somewhat habit-based. Consumers buy products because their parents bought them, passing brand equity from generation to generation. Marketers know this and often leverage that heritage with customers, but in a world where there is disruptive competition for brand loyalty, is heritage marketing still viable?

The answer is yes. While some companies are shelving the heritage value of their brands, others, including Upfield, Ford, Hunter Douglas, Benjamin Moore, and Hormel, are capitalizing on the intergenerational equity of products and brands to retain existing customers and attract new ones.

Bradford Hudson, professor of marketing at Boston College and president...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands