What is brand innovation, and how does it keep an established brand relevant?

What is brand innovation?

Brand innovation is the deliberate renewal of what a brand offers, how it looks and how it behaves, so that people keep choosing it as their needs, culture and competition change. It keeps an established brand relevant by giving people new reasons to pick it while protecting the memories that made them pick it in the first place.

At IW Agency, we treat brand innovation as a business tool, not a creative exercise. It can touch any part of the brand: the product, the pack, the identity, the tone, the experience. The test is whether more people choose you, more often, at a price that holds.

The evidence for reinvention is strong. In the Kantar BrandZ 2025 ranking, brands that disrupted their category or reinvented themselves accounted for 71 per cent of the incremental USD 9.3 trillion of value created in the Global Top 100 since 2006 (Kantar, 2025).

Conclusion: Heritage gets you remembered. Innovation gets you chosen.

Why do established brands lose relevance?

Established brands rarely lose relevance through one mistake. They fade because the world moves and the brand stands still. Familiarity turns into habit, and habit turns into indifference.

Competitors speed this up. Private labels copy the look, and challengers tell a sharper story. Kantar notes that fragmentation in flavoured spirits and craft beer "is also diluting the market share of legacy brands" (Kantar, 2025).

We see the same pattern in our own work. Göteborgskex faced private labels that grew by imitating Swedish cookie classics, which left the category crowded and dustier. For Ballerina, the brief was to give a cookie classic renewed relevance. Svenska kyrkan risked losing cultural relevance as new generations formed different relationships to faith.

Conclusion: Being known is not the same as being wanted.

How is brand innovation different from a rebrand or product innovation?

A rebrand changes the expression and product innovation changes the offer. Brand innovation decides which of the two the brand needs, and how much of each, to stay chosen.

Sometimes a new pack is enough. Sometimes the brand needs a new range, a new role in people's lives or a full brand repositioning. When the meaning has drifted, the work starts with the brand platform. Our guide to what a brand platform is and when you need a new one covers that step.

We think the costly mistake is launching new products that pull attention away from the core without strengthening the brand as a whole. Gustavsberg shows the alternative. The question there was how a functional brand could evolve from serving professionals to inspiring people, without losing what made it great. That is a shift in role, not just a new logo.

What should change, and what should stay?

Separate what people love from what has aged, and only renew the second. At IW, we sort every brand innovation decision into three parts: keep, change and add.

• Keep: the distinctive assets people already carry in their heads. The name, the shape, the colour, the taste, the memory.

• Change: the expression that has dated. Tone of voice, pack hierarchy, how the brand shows up in culture.

• Add: new reasons to choose. Products, formats, experiences, channels.

The order matters. Decide what to keep first, because that protects the equity you are building on.

Champis is a clear case of keep and change. The brief was to evolve a slumbering classic into a brand that is both iconic and relevant, without losing what made it unmistakable. Lurpak is the same question at a larger scale: how a brand built on 120 years of craft heritage could evolve and become future ready.

Conclusion: Protect the memory. Renew the meaning.

How does AI change what brand relevance means?

When AI assistants help people choose, a brand is only relevant if it is clear enough to be described and distinct enough to be named. We think clarity, recognition and feeling matter more in the AI era, not less.

Picture someone asking an assistant for a good rye bread or a classic Swedish cookie. The answer leans on what is said consistently about each brand. A brand that says ten different things gets summarised as nothing in particular.

This makes brand innovation a discipline of focus. Every renewal should sharpen one idea the brand owns, in words and images that repeat across every channel. Optimisation is the new seduction.

Conclusion: If an assistant cannot describe you, it will not recommend you.

How do you know it is time to innovate your brand?

It is time when people still recognise your brand but have stopped thinking about it. Common signals:

• Growth depends more and more on price promotions.

• Younger audiences know the name but feel no connection.

• Private labels copy you convincingly.

• People describe the brand in the past tense.

You do not need a crisis to act. Hatting worked in a category long defined by muted tones and functional messaging, where rye bread had become predictable. The brand saw an opportunity in that sameness. The strongest time to innovate is before the numbers force you to.

What does this mean for your brand?

• Start with the business problem. Name the choice you want people to make differently, then pick the tools.

• Decide what to keep before what to change. Distinctive assets take years to build and minutes to throw away.

• Renew the whole brand, not a single launch. New products should strengthen the core, not compete with it for attention.

• Write for machines as well as people. One clear idea, said the same way everywhere, is what AI assistants repeat.

• Look at work that shows the trade-offs. Our published cases show how heritage brands have handled them.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between brand innovation and brand revitalisation?

Brand revitalisation brings a faded brand back to life. Brand innovation is broader: it is the ongoing renewal that keeps a brand relevant, whether or not it has faded.

Does brand innovation mean changing the logo?

Not necessarily. A logo change is one tool among many. Often the logo is exactly the asset worth keeping, and the renewal happens in pack, product, tone or experience.

Is brand innovation only for consumer brands?

No. Public organisations, NGOs and B2B companies face the same loss of relevance. SOS Barnbyar needed a clearer way to communicate as competition for attention increased and donors demanded more clarity and transparency.

Who should own brand innovation in an organisation?

Marketing usually leads, but leadership should own the decision. Brand innovation affects products, pricing and how the organisation is perceived, so it is a business question.

How do you measure whether brand innovation works?

Measure whether people choose you. Track preference, penetration, loyalty and the price the brand can hold, before and after the change.

Can brand innovation damage an established brand?

Yes. It can do damage if it breaks the assets people love or spreads the brand across too many ideas. Deciding what to keep first is the best protection.

Staying chosen

Relevance is never permanent. It is earned again with every decision about what to keep, what to change and what to add. If you are weighing those decisions for your brand, write to us at hello@iwagency.com.

Sources

• Charting 20 years of brand value: Kantar BrandZ 2025 ranking reveals the world's most valuable brands — Kantar, 2025