Brand identity is the essence of how a company presents itself to the world – a blend of values, visual elements, and messaging that creates a unique perception in the minds of consumers. Yet, there’s an often overlooked element that can enrich and strengthen this identity: brand heritage.
Heritage branding is more than just a nod to the year your company was established or a few nostalgic references to the past. It’s a strategic way of using your brand’s history to build deeper connections with customers, fostering trust and loyalty. A strong heritage allows companies to demonstrate long-standing reliability, authenticity, and expertise – qualities that modern consumers increasingly seek out in a market saturated with options.
Even if your company hasn’t been around for decades, you still have a story worth telling. Your journey, values, and milestones all contribute to a sense of continuity and identity that customers can connect with. Whether you’re a new brand or a century-old institution, leveraging your brand’s heritage as part of your broader brand identity can help solidify your place in the market.
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, tapping into the power of heritage branding can turn your brand into more than just a product – it can create a lasting legacy.
With the braai fires dying down from Heritage Day here in South Africa, and with Heritage Month almost behind us, we at Interact RDT wanted to take a moment to talk about an element of corporate brand identity that doesn’t get enough attention: heritage branding.
What is Heritage Branding?
You may not have heard of heritage branding, but you have certainly seen it – and you might even use it in one form or another. For example, every aspect of a brand experience that leans on that brand’s history, or calls back to the long-distant year it was established, is contributing to that brand identity.
Heritage branding is branding that utilises the brand’s history as a form of marketing and customer engagement. While it isn’t discussed as often as it should be, many brands employ it. And for good reason – a brand’s history can be a powerful component of its brand identity; one that encourages customer trust.
That might not sound helpful unless you’ve got a brand that’s been around for a half-century or more. But the good news is that the brand equity that comes from heritage branding is not only for companies that’ve been around since the end of the dinosaurs.
Every brand has a story, and telling yours could be a core part of your brand identity.
The Power of Storytelling as a Brand-Building Tool
Telling and enjoying stories is very human. It’s how we share ideas, and it’s through stories that we often most strongly relate to each other.
At the heart of your brand identity – no matter how big or small, how corporate or casual – there is a human story. One of struggle and success. There were dreams, visions, and missions that drove your brand from conception to the point it’s at today.
That is your brand’s heritage.
In a 2014 research paper on the topic of brand heritage, the Journal of Product & Brand Management (in association with several schools of economics) stated:
“Coincident with its current attraction to marketers, heritage is acknowledged as a key organisational resource imparting long-lasting strategic value: companies are unique in terms of their heritage, and the heritage can provide the basis for superior performance. Unlocking the potential hidden value of a brand’s heritage may be one way of harnessing the past and the present in order to safeguard the future.”
In other words, your heritage is potentially a selling point and a key part of your brand identity.
While you might not be able to leverage 70 years in business toward building market trust, you can leverage the unique perspective and position granted by your brand’s heritage. This helps tie it into your brand identity, using it to inform your product or service.
Brand Heritage and Top-of-Mind Awareness
Consider Avon, a brand that truly embraces heritage marketing in all of its aspects. Not only is their 135-year history a core part of their brand identity, but so is their heritage of empowering women through flexible, accessible self-employment.
That heritage, and its centrality to their brand identity, is a part of why Avon saw a 114% rise in representative sign-ups and an accompanying doubling of online sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. This, while many other companies reported suffering through labour shortages as a result of the “Great Resignation.”
Because of their brand identity built on their heritage, Avon occupies a niche that goes far beyond simply beauty products.
Including Brand Heritage in Your Brand Identity
Maybe your brand doesn’t have 100 years in business under its belt. Maybe you’ve only got five or ten years. It doesn’t entirely matter. You still have a story to tell, and possibly a multi-year history of serving the same customers or community. All of that can be considered a part of your brand identity and can be drawn on to inform its identity and engage with the market.
But there are a few fundamentals you should keep in mind when leveraging your brand’s heritage to communicate with or serve your market:
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Create a brand timeline: Keep a record of your brand’s history. Not only do you want the dates of important milestones, but you also want to know how your brand’s heritage ties into the shared history of events experienced by its community and customer base. This enhances your overall brand identity.
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Be authentic: Do not completely fabricate your brand history and heritage. Modern audiences crave authenticity, and they have the means to verify your story. Even if you worry that your brand’s story is not the most compelling, personalise it to match your brand identity, don’t fictionalise it.
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Be people-focused: People care about people, and so you should always tell your brand story through the stories of the people who built it. That the brand was established is less important than the vision and the mission of the people who established it. This strengthens your brand identity by making it more relatable.
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Evoke nostalgia: Nostalgia is one of the most powerful human emotions, and one of the most interwoven with heritage marketing. If you can tie your brand to important positive events and memories in your customers’ lives (first car, first home, first love, etc.), then those memories are sources of positive brand equity and enhance your brand identity.
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Innovate: In the Avon example, Avon had to adapt to the influx of potential representatives as well as the reality of the pandemic. In doing so, they added to and lived up to the promise of their heritage through new innovations. To truly embrace heritage marketing, your brand must live up to its heritage and integrate it into its evolving brand identity.
Contact Interact RDT for Branding and Market Expertise
A brand’s heritage is only one element of its overall brand identity, but its ability to impact both the customer and employee experience can be profound, if properly leveraged with appropriate expertise and supported by effective alignment of communications, branding, and business objectives.
Contact Interact RDT today for comprehensive, full-spectrum, and cross-platform strategies to align your brand identity with your goals.
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