What we can learn from the everyday brands that are becoming forgettable.
Some iconic brands disappear in a blaze of glory, with BBC tolling the bell on the 6 o’clock news and social media blowing-up with hindsight heroes. Ted Baker and Wilko are probably the most obvious examples in the past couple of years.
And whilst it’s sad to see them go, they are at least able to die with honour, rather than live in shame (to badly appropriate an old samurai proverb).
Others, however, aren’t so lucky, they die a slow death over years, decades, gradually fading from our minds whilst slipping down and eventually off the shelves.
These are the brands with incredibly high awareness, but painfully low salience. If you try and think of one now you might struggle, but if I say Horlicks, Typhoo or Boddingtons, I’m fairly confident you’ll know what I’m talking about without being able to recall the last time you noticed any of them in a supermarket.
I’m not naïve enough to suggest that I can diagnose all the issues with these brands from afar, and not so daft that I believe brand comms alone is the saviour or destroyer. But I do think there’s a lot we can learn from taking a look at enough of these faded icons.
Here are my five faded iconic brands and what I think we can learn from them…
Typhoo Tea
Jump back to the 60's and Typhoo flogged 80m pounds (lbs) of tea every year and were well and truly a British staple. 40 years later at the turn of the century, the brand saw a resurgence through its ‘Two Thumbs Fresh’ campaign, which despite attracting some controversy for its portrayal of Indian people and culture, was effective and did put an inescapably memorable phrase in the mind.
But in recent years, as the black tea market continues in steady decline, and Yorkshire Tea has blasted to the market top spot through stand out brand building, Typhoo has struggled to find its place in the market, ultimately finding itself in administration at the end of 2024.
Nescafe
Whilst the French were enjoying croissants and freshly-pressed coffee, the Italians chatting over espresso and the USA was sticking a Starbucks on every street corner, we brits were knocking back teaspoon after teaspoon of Nescafe instant coffee.
In fact, whilst coffee culture really started to boom in the UK in the 90s, it lead to the massive growth of Nescafe’s Gold Blend, a slightly posher instant coffee, rather than a move away from granulated convenience.
But the coffee market hasn’t stopped evolving, and where Nescafe used to ride the wave, it now seems that the market has moved beneath this everyday staple, with a 10% volume decline reported in 2024.
Hovis
For much of its 140 year history, Hovis has been the biggest bread brand in the UK, and whilst the bakery that brought us the boy on the bike is still one of the UKs biggest grocery brands, it has fallen far from the top spot.
On one hand, they could blame changing consumer habits; gone are the days when every lunchbox featured a couple of slices of white bread. But that argument holds little water when considering the rise of Warburton’s (pun intended).
Whilst Hovis are fumbling around with campaigns trying too hard to warm hearts, Warburton’s are knocking around with Clooney, Stallone, De Niro and Colman baking marketing gold.
Yorkie
No matter what people think of Yorkie, two things are undeniable about it… Firstly, the raisin and biscuit Yorkie is one of the best chocolate bars every created. And secondly, the brand is a shadow of its former self.
Driven by the exceptional ‘Lorry Driver’ campaign, Yorkie enjoyed great success in the 80s and 90s. Then in the early 2000s the brand hit a second wind with the ‘Not For Girls’ campaign, which despite massive controversy, increased sales amongst both men and women.
But since their last brand campaign in 2012, which saw the death of ‘Not For Girls’, the brand has faded away (including discontinuing its biscuit bar last year) and struggled to find its place in a difficult, busy market.
Boddingtons
The market for beer, be it in pubs or at home, is pretty much unrecognisable now from 20 or 30 years ago. And whilst some brands like Guinness, Stella Artois, perhaps Carlsberg, have weathered the storm, so many have failed to stay relevant and hold a place in the minds or palms of drinkers.
Few have seen a dramatic fall from grace quite like Boddingtons; the brand's heyday defined by the exceptional ‘Cream of Manchester’ campaign and the iconic partnership with Mel Sykes.
But where Guinness, Stella Artois and Carlsberg managed to build longer term creative platforms, Boddingtons’ creative excellence was short lived.
The obvious link here between these brands is they all used to invest more in big brand building campaigns than they do now, but equally previous commercial success mostly fed their ability to invest in brand. So the reality is much more complex.
All of these brands still exist today because they were once exceptionally successful, either market leaders or big players. That’s why they enjoy incredibly high awareness and are still around many years later.
But they also all failed to move at the pace of the market, not necessarily stagnant markets disrupted by new entrants, but established markets evolving in line with changing customer needs that they were slow to spot.
And whilst they’ve all run exceptionally effective brand building campaigns that have been strong enough for real people to talk about on the bus or in the pub, they’ve failed to create and stick with a powerful idea for long enough in recent years.