We’ve talked about how to keep your brand vibrant and healthy---but what can you do if it’s out of date---or even dead?

According to a ‘retro marketing’ expert quoted in “Can a Dead Brand Live Again?” published by the New York Times, ”’There’s no real reason that a brand needs to die…unless it is attached to a product that ‘functionally doesn’t work.’ That is, as long as a given product can change to meet contemporary performance standards, ‘your success is really dependent on how skillful you are in managing the brand’s story so that it resonates with meaning that consumers like.’”

This article about marketers who specialize in reviving dead and dying brands provides valuable insight for marketers, regardless of where your brand is in the product lifecycle.

Some highlights:

• How the faultiness of consumer memory provides an opportunity “not just in what we remember but also in what we misremember. For example, Stanley  never produced ladders but when they discovered that many consumers 'remembered' they did, they began to produce ladders.
• The rebirth of White Cloud toilet tissue as (essentially) a Wal-Mart store brand.
• How updating the Volkswagen Beetle brand helped make it, according to the article, one of the most successful reanimated brands of all time.
• The newly relaunched Salon Selectives hair care brand illustrates how the new brand owner hopes to attract nostalgic fans of the brand as well as new consumers who aren’t familiar with it, providing great learning for marketers of mature brands.

This article isn’t a quick read but it’s a very worthwhile one and will provide some great thought starters on strategies to better manage your own brands.