Guest Blog from The Goldstein Group, New York City
Whether Heather Locklear or Kim Cattrall, Aqua Net has played a leading role in leading ladies’ hair styles for decades. The antidote to a “bad hair day,” Aqua Net was the go-to brand throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, helping women get their hair higher and higher.
After its introduction, Aqua Net grew to be a household name. It was first found on the dressing tables of fine salons and made the leap into retail in the late 1950’s. The brand has long held cult status and its image has been burnished by a bevy of big hair beauties from Donna Mills to Jon Bon Jovi (men count too, right?); represented on screen in such hits as “When Harry Met Sally“ and “MadMen”; and it continues to flourish on YouTube. Around 2002, with the Broadway revival of Hairspray, Aqua Net enjoyed a revival of its own as the brand name once again became top of mind.
As often happens to older, beloved brands, Aqua Net changed owners multiple times and the brand went through an evolution with a diluted logo and brand impression. It was sold from Fabergé to McGregor to Unilever and lost focus on its core heritage. In the hands of Lornamead, Inc., the brand had an opportunity to be reinvigorated. “The package had lost its personality along the way with its previous owners,” said Randy Sloan, President of Lornamead. So last year, Randy and the Lornamead team decided it was time for a makeover and called in Terri Goldstein and The Goldstein Group with a firm mandate: “Make the brand relevant and exciting again, but don’t lose one current consumer!”
Given the direction and the desire to extend the brand’s reach to a broader audience, Darcy Bolker, creative director, led the design team through a historical review of the brand and initiated their rigorous Shelf Sight Sequence™ process. With minds set to awakening Aqua Net’s glorious past, the team used this insight to spring board the past into the future, was able to create brand-relevance for a younger audience without alienating its heritage users. Could another era of big hair be in our future?
