Brand lifecycle: from launch to decline

The difference is fundamental for management. A product manager thinks in terms of 'take off the market, replace with a new one.' A brand manager must think in terms of 'maintain the connection in the consumer's mind, even if the product changes beyond recognition.' These are different planning horizons and different success metrics.

The statistics for corporations are telling: the average lifespan of a company from the S&P index 500 dropped from 67 years in the 1920-s to approximately 15 years today, while the median duration of a public company's existence — regardless of industry — is around 10 years. Brands within these companies often outlive the legal structure itself — they get acquired, integrated into other portfolios, but the name and visual code continue to function.

How long brands actually live: figures, not theory

Historical analysis of trademarks provides specific benchmarks that are rarely encountered in Russian-language materials. The average lifespan of a trademark is 17,9 years, the median is 10,7 years. At the same time, 60% of registered brands do not survive to 20 years of age, and only 15% reach the age of 30 years. This means that the vast majority of brands you see on the market today are statistically doomed to disappear within two decades—if they are not consciously supported.

For the Russian market, the timeframes are different and depend on the product category:

And in order for a brand to begin to be perceived as truly "rooted" and deserving of unconditional trust, it requires much more time: the FutureBright Group study cites the figure of 54 years of history. This is the level at which a brand ceases to be a 'new player' even in the eyes of skeptics.

How to Determine the Stage a Brand Is At: Specific Indicators

A visual assessment that 'the brand looks tired' tells nothing to a manager. Measurable signals are needed.

The key practical moment: a decline is not a death diagnosis, but a decision point. It is here that a company either invests in revitalization or ignores the signals and fades away.

Case study of Tropicana: how changing the orange on the packaging cost $55 million

In 2009 year, PepsiCo decided to update the design of Tropicana Pure Premium — it removed the iconic image of the orange with the protruding straw and replaced it with an abstract glass of juice. The rebranding cost approximately $35 million in marketing and development investments. The result: within two months, the company lost $55 million in revenue, sales dropped by 20%, and the packaging was reverted to its original appearance.

This is not a story about bad design — the new packaging won graphic competitions. The problem is elsewhere: in the consumer's mind, a brand exists not as a logo, but as a network of associations — a kind of connectome, where the visual anchor (that very orange) instantly activates the entire chain of trust, taste expectations, and shelf-choice habits. By removing the anchor, the company did not 'refresh' the brand — it severed the connection that customers had built up over years, and in the store, people physically could not find 'their' product within a fraction of a second, the time it takes to make a purchase decision.

Hence comes the concept of the brand-memory half-life period: without constant visual and communicative reminders, associations with the brand weaken over 5–7 years until they reach a level where a competitor occupies the freed space in consciousness. A radical change in identity without a transitional period artificially and instantly imitates this process of forgetting.

Why brands die from their own decisions, not from aging

The age of a brand by itself does not kill anyone — Coca-Cola, Nike, Chanel have existed for more than a century. It is specific management mistakes that kill, and three illustrative cases prove this.

• Victoria's Secret and Hooters — both brands were built on an image that was attractive in the 1980–1990s, but became perceived as toxic in the 2010s in the context of changing social norms. Hooters lost 31% of revenue from 2019 to 2024 year, the number of locations decreased by a quarter. The mistake was not that 'time has passed' — but that the companies tried to please the new audience and retain the old one at the same time, diluting the positioning to unrecognizability instead of making a honest choice between one strategy.
• Supreme — the capitalization dropped from $2,1 billion in 2020 year to $1,5 billion in 2024. The reason is not external: the brand was built on a deficit and hype, and market oversaturation with collaborations killed the main asset — rarity. This is a classic example of expanding the audience, killing uniqueness.
• Tropicana (as analyzed above) — losing the key visual anchor without changing the product itself.

Changing cultural context is not a death sentence for a brand, but a requirement for adaptation. The difference between death and adaptation is whether the company preserves the core of its identity, changing the form of expression, or tries to become 'everything for everyone' and loses recognizability altogether. The first is evolution. The second is brand suicide by its own hands.

The point of no return: when it's too late to save it

A point of no return does exist, but it is not determined by the brand's age, but rather by whether or not it still has at least one stable associative core in the audience's memory. If a brand still evokes any emotions or memories—be it negative or nostalgic—revitalization is possible. If a brand evokes nothing at all, except indifference, there is nothing to save: advertising will have to build a new name from zero, which is more expensive than launching a new brand from scratch.

Successful examples demonstrate the general principle: reanimation works when the legacy is preserved, but the form of presentation is reinterpreted.

1. The confectionery factory «Karát» emerged from loss in 242 million rubles (2014) on revenue 1,2 billion (2016, growth by 68%) due to rebranding of packaging, which retained the visual code of Soviet suprematism—recognizable yet modernized.
2. «Kolomenskaya Pastila» reassembled itself not as a confectionery manufacturer, but as a seller of history and experience — a museum format and a narrative about the merchant past gave the brand a new niche instead of competing with mass confectionery brands.
3. Berlingo went through revitalization by returning to an utilitarian, honest positioning, without trying to compete with the premium segment for which it was never created.

In all three cases, the companies did not invent a new brand — they found a forgotten, but living fragment of the connectome and built everything around it anew. This is the main practical difference between brand lifecycle management and product lifecycle management: a product can be written off and replaced, a brand — is almost always more profitable to revive if at least one thread of consumer memory is still intact.