Category Benchmarks are the reference point for the category. They define quality expectations. They anchor price ladders. They shape what “normal” looks like. They are widely distributed, culturally familiar, and top-of-mind. Their risk is gradual dilution of differentiation. This paradox is structural because the systems that protect their current position often make long-term growth harder.
Today, heritage brands occupy a difficult position. Squeezed between private label that sets value and insurgent brands that speak to values. Having worked on several, I have found that they often take the same approach of maximizing margins, targeting younger consumers, and launching line extensions and PPA.
When an iconic brand begins to fade, the decline is rarely dramatic. In iconic brands, financial performance often lags changes in cultural relevance and brand meaning. Revenue may hold steady. Market share may appear stable. Awareness remains high. Yet competitors begin shaping the future while the incumbent defends the past. For leadership teams, restoring an iconic brand is not a communications exercise. It is a strategic mandate.
My mentor Clayton Christensen taught us that disruptors win by being cheaper. They enter the market at the bottom with “good enough” alternatives that cost less, then gradually move upmarket, as Toyota’s economy cars eventually gave rise to Lexus. Yet urgent care is disrupting American healthcare even while charging somewhat more than a traditional primary care visit, and the strategy is working brilliantly.
One of the things that makes marketing advice sound so specious, at times, is when the marketing advice dished up is considered newly insightful, but is, in reality, just a description of the eternal obvious, the “greens fees,” the “table stakes.” When The Wall Street Journal ran an article titled, “Restaurant Executives Tell Us How They Get Customers When Times Are Hard,” you might have been expecting some real insights. You might have expected some...
