The problem had a shape everyone in the room recognised: the customers who loved the brand were getting older, and their children were not replacing them. Relevance with youth was falling and the legacy base was shrinking. Left alone, the two lines cross.
What “speak Gen Z” actually means
The lazy version is slang and a younger colour palette. It reads as a parent in a hoodie, and Gen Z spot it instantly. The version that worked was structural. We rebuilt the brand voice from the ground up: gender-neutral rather than aimed at the mum in the kitchen, event-driven rather than product-driven, and fresh in the sense of reacting to this week rather than repeating last year’s calendar.
Visuals followed the voice. Copy followed the voice. The feed stopped being a shelf and became a character with opinions.
Not just a new look. A new voice, with rules the team could apply without us in the room.
Doing it as a loop
A rebrand is usually a launch. We ran it as a loop. New pillars went out, we read engagement weekly, and the ones the audience ignored were cut before they became habits. Formats that landed were pushed and varied. Within a few months the account had a recognisable personality, built out of what had already been proven rather than what the deck predicted.
The numbers
- Ranked number one in noodle social media growth in 2025.
- Organic follower growth above 35 percent year on year.
- Engagement rate above 8 percent, on a legacy FMCG account.
What we would tell another legacy brand
Your heritage is not the problem. The problem is a voice tuned to an audience that is ageing out, and the fear that changing the voice will lose them. It will not, if the change is about how you talk rather than what you stand for. Young audiences are not asking heritage brands to pretend to be new. They are asking to be spoken to as if they were in the room.
Read the full case: Reviving a Dying Demographic.
