Legacy Brands and the Illusion of Reinvention: What Crayola’s Latest Strategy Gets Wrong
Legacy brands like Crayola have been coasting on nostalgia for decades, but the recent attempts to inject fresh relevance—led by Victoria Lozano—are a textbook case of marketing theater masking a deeper strategic inertia. The narrative pitched by Adweek about building ‘new business strategies while maintaining emotional resonance’ sounds nice, but it’s the kind of corporate-speak that signals a lack of real innovation. Crayola’s brand equity isn’t some sacred relic; it’s a ticking time bomb if you don’t actually evolve beyond crayons and coloring books in a digital-first, experience-driven world.
Lozano’s approach, as described, focuses on emotional connection, which is a fine start, but it’s also a dodge. Emotional resonance is a lazy placeholder for actual product innovation or meaningful customer engagement. When your biggest play is to lean into feelings and heritage instead of expanding your ecosystem or leveraging modern tech, you’re just repainting the same old walls. Meanwhile, competitors are doubling down on interactive digital experiences, educational platforms, and sustainable materials—areas Crayola barely acknowledges.
The whole exercise reeks of a brand stuck in a loop of safe, incremental updates dressed as strategic pivots. This is the same mistake countless legacy brands make, mistaking nostalgia for currency in a market that demands relevance through utility and innovation. Lozano’s journey is less about transformation and more about preserving a comfortable status quo that will eventually erode. If you want to keep your brand alive, you need to disrupt your own business model, not just rewrite your press releases.
What’s worse is the industry’s complicity in this cycle. Agencies and consultants love to package these ’emotional resonance’ campaigns as breakthrough moments, charging premium fees for ideas that amount to little more than lip service. The real work—updating product lines, integrating technology, redefining user experiences—is left as an afterthought. Crayola’s story is a cautionary tale: stop worshipping legacy. Start building something that scares you, or prepare to be forgotten.
