There is a type of business story that has become nearly cliché: A legacy brand is facing stagnating growth. Loyal customers are aging out, and new customers aren’t taking their place. So the brand reinvents itself to pull in a younger segment of the market, often by borrowing ideas from cooler competitors to seem more “on-trend.”
But instead of younger and cooler, the rebrand comes off as insincere, stilted, or cringey. Worse, the brand’s older, core customers, who liked the brand as it was, are irritated by the changes. Instead of spurring new growth, the effort drives off some of the existing customers, leaving the brand worse off than when it started.
This is the recent story of The Bachelor television franchise. After a two-year hiatus, ABC’s dating show returned this summer, having made changes that were designed to appeal to a younger audience. The updated Bachelor in Paradise cribbed from Love Island, its primary rival in the competitive-dating-in-bathing-suits genre, and a show beloved by the younger audiences The Bachelor wanted to attract.
The changes included an aggressive, quick-cut editing style and the introduction of a cash prize for the winners. Younger consumers weren’t drawn to the new format, but previously loyal fans panned the changes in online forums, suggesting the show should have included a seizure warning. Both the ratings and viewership numbers for this season hit historic lows.
Cracker Barrel’s recent woes also fit this pattern. Its “traditionalist” segment of 65-plus diners was dwindling, leading the brand to try attracting new, younger customers by updating the interiors and changing the logo. It is not clear that the changes brought in those younger diners in significant numbers. But the changes did produce an exhaustively dissected backlash from its loyal customer base, for whom, it turned out, nostalgia was a significant part of the Cracker Barrel appeal.
Meanwhile, JCP’s major reinvention more than a decade ago was also driven, in part, by trying to attract younger customers with its elimination of deep discounts in favor of everyday low pricing. But the move was far more successful in driving away its older loyalists, who loved hunting for those deals. Lands’ End tried to lure in younger customers when it introduced a high-fashion line and edgier branding. Instead, they went from profits of $9M to losses of nearly $8M within a year.
The desire to attract younger customers made sense for all these brands. But they each fell into the same trap: They assumed they could make changes to their offerings and branding to attract new customers without having to worry about how their current customers might react to those changes. The stewards of these brands forgot that different people want different things from the brands that serve them.
While there are times when young and old consumers both want the same things from their brands, the fact is, younger customers and older customers also frequently want different things. Changing a brand to make it more appealing to younger customers may (or may not) draw in those younger customers—but it may also accidentally displease the older customers who like the brand just the way it is.
In our book, The Growth Dilemma, Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025), we identify a few key strategies brands can use to manage the risk of conflict between customer segments as they grow. Here are three:
1. Create different spaces for different audiences
One strategy involves carving out separate spaces within a brand—either conceptual or physical—for different customer segments. For example, many brands use multiple social media handles to communicate to different segments. Timberland has different Instagram channels for its blue-collar worker segment and its fashion segment. Starbucks has different store formats catering to those who value Starbucks as a place to get a quick and convenient coffee on-the-go (kiosk and drive-through locations), and those who value Starbucks as a place to work and socialize (its “third place” lounge locations).
Some brands diffuse potential conflict between customers by creating separate “gated communities” within the brand that cater to different customer segments. Historically, Nike was great at creating sport-specific communities that were each distinct within the Nike brand. Nike basketball customers had different products, apps, advertising, and experiences than Nike runners, tennis players, or sneakerheads.
Some brands create a hierarchy among their customer base, allowing a status separation among customers. This is a common path for many fashion brands that serve segments with different price sensitivities and design demands. For example, Armani serves different segments under the Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani, and Armani Exchange sub-brands.
Credit card and financial services brands often create a hierarchy of customers based on net worth and spend to tailor products and services. Escalating levels of service and benefits allow a company like American Express to simultaneously serve mass markets and elite customers without causing tension between groups with very different expectations.
2. Focus on one audience
Sometimes two segments are so divergent in their preferences or identities that they simply cannot be served well under the same brand. In these cases, brands may opt to “fire” a customer segment—as Burberry did in the early 2000s after it inadvertently became popular among soccer hooligans, by discontinuing products popular among “chavs” and reducing the prominence of its iconic check pattern.
In other cases, they may develop a new brand to serve a new segment. Toyota is able to successfully serve a diverse set of customers under a single brand. But management wisely realized that there were limits to how far they could stretch the Toyota brand and so introduced Lexus to serve a set of customers with a fundamentally different set of preferences.
Especially in the cases of ideological conflict between customer segments (e.g., Bud Light’s attempts to be an apparent ally of the transgender community), the gulfs between customer groups may simply be too vast to span with a single brand. Some segments are best served by different brands.
3. Find common ground
Perhaps the best strategy for brands looking to grow into younger segments is in looking for convergence in values and preferences across segments before the brand starts making changes. Instead of reorienting the brand to appeal to the new, hoped-for customers, brands should first look for the Venn diagram intersection among 1) preferences of existing customers, 2) preferences of the new customers, and 3) the brand’s image and history. Growth strategies that don’t satisfy all three criteria tend to fail.
Consider the remarkable recent resurgence of another legacy TV franchise. Despite being around for 20 years, Dancing with the Stars has been growing in recent seasons, and attracting younger viewers in the process. DWTS didn’t pull this off by fundamentally changing what its longtime fans love about the show, but instead by innovating in areas around its successful formula.
These tangential improvements have increased the draw for new, younger fans without stepping on the toes of loyalists. For its “stars,” DWTS has been increasingly turning to celebrities relevant to younger audiences, including recent Olympians, TikTok influencers, and reality TV stars. It has also created additional, meme-worthy social media content, including footage of the dancers training or goofing around backstage. This content serves as a supplemental draw to younger segments, without messing with the on-stage magic that loyal watchers love.
Just like the relationships in Bachelor in Paradise, the relationships among customer segments can be nuanced and difficult to manage. Unlike the relationships in Bachelor in Paradise, the goal is not maximum drama. Knowing the rules of customer relationship management can allow brands to attract customers across generations without experiencing the backlash.
