By Tom Whitfield

Four creative and marketing leaders sat down with Adweek's Adspeak host Brittaney Keifer to answer one question: how do you reinvent a legacy brand without losing what made it iconic? The panel brought hard-won lessons from rebranding two household names, La-Z-Boy and Brawny.

Amanda Earley, Brand Director at Brawny, joined Jaime Robinson, Christy Hoskins and Jessica Henrichs for the episode. Their collective track record gives the conversation weight.

• Earley has led product innovation, marketing campaigns and business revitalization at Brawny.
• Robinson, an Emmy winner, holds nearly 40 Cannes Lions, including multiple Grand Prix and Golds. She co-founded Joan Creative and served as a Cannes and D&AD jury president.
• Hoskins brings more than 20 years across CPG, consumer durables and retail.
• Henrichs is CEO of DonerColle Partners, a 2024 ADWEEK 50 honoree who joined Colle McVoy in 2021.

What does the panel say actually works?

The guests share a consistent playbook. Understand a brand's history before changing it. Lean into authentic strengths rather than running from them. Ensure product innovation can support the promises a new identity makes.

The La-Z-Boy case anchors what the panel calls the "lean into your strengths" principle: mine your own history to reposition a brand stuck in nostalgia, rather than inventing a personality from scratch.

The takeaway in plain words: heritage is raw material, not baggage.

How do you refresh a brand without triggering backlash?

The panel argues for involving consumers and stakeholders early. Involvement builds buy-in. Buy-in prevents the social-media pile-ons that greet poorly tested rebrands.

Social platforms play a central role in this. The guests describe them as the lowest-risk place to test how a legacy mascot or character should evolve before a brand commits budget to broader campaigns. Pressure-test beloved icons small, then scale.

The rule: test cheap, learn fast, commit late.

What role does culture play?

Earned, culturally savvy activations should precede a full rebrand, the panel says. Creative partnerships can unlock stronger ideas than in-house teams working alone. Evolving familiar brand characters — rather than replacing them — makes change feel natural rather than disruptive.

For Brawny, that meant pairing product innovation with the brand identity so the promise and the product stayed aligned. For any marketer refreshing a household name, the panel's framework balances four tensions: heritage, innovation, consumer trust and creative risk.

The closing lesson from the episode: brands that treat their legacy as an asset, test changes where risk is cheapest, and bring consumers along can modernize without eroding the trust that made them iconic in the first place.