Maintaining a Consistent Visible Presence

Unlike Pampers, many brands do not have the luxury of 40-plus years of thriving brand equity.

The next brand we will look at was popular with one generation in the 1970s and 1980s, and had to rebuild its equity 15 years later. Through aggressive and even controversial moves, the brand has regained an awareness and identity through consistent and frequent messaging.

Candie’s Brand Turnaround Story

Candie’s was a very sexy shoe brand that was hot and then was not. Candie’s was first designed and marketed by Charles Cole, the father of shoe designer and retailer Kenneth Cole, in the early 1980s through his company El Greco. The first Candie’s shoe, known as the “slide,” was a sexy, high-heeled “mule” that took off when Olivia Newton-John wore tight pants and high-heeled shoes similar to the Candie’s in the movie Grease. By the mid-eighties more than 14 million pairs of slides were sold—one out of four American women owned a pair.