Nosferatu Meets Enron: Can You Really Resurrect a "Dead" Brand?

Every era has its vampire myth. Some creature that refuses to stay buried and comes back from the dead to haunt the living. In branding, the undead take the form of logos, taglines, and company names. They stay dormant for years, then dug back up the moment someone decides there's still equity left in the coffin.

But not every brand that rises again deserves to. Some are more Nosferatu than phoenix. They’re recognizable, yet still unsettling and trailing the damage they left behind the first time. Brands rarely die for just one reason. Some simply fail to evolve as markets, technology, and customer expectations move on. Others survive a crisis and fight their way back to trust. And some become so fused to real, tangible harm that digging the name back up does more damage than leaving it in the ground.

So when is a legacy name worth resurrecting, and when should it stay buried? HexaGroup's Director of Strategy — Emily Hubbell — and VP of Client Public Relations — Mark Edwards — sat down to talk through what actually causes a brand to "die," what a credible resurrection requires, and why some names simply can't be brought back to life, no matter how much nostalgia is on their side. 

HexaGroup: Emily, what does it mean to you for a brand to die? Is there a clear line between a brand that's just struggling and one that's actually dead?

Emily Hubbell: To me, a dead brand is one that's done so much damage within its once-loyal follower base that it feels insurmountable to rebuild a reputation or a brand story that reflects what the brand originally stood for.

It's something you cannot come back from reputation-wise, whether it's a flaw in a product, unethical business dealings, or some kind of content- or PR-related crisis where the response to an issue was tone deaf.

HexaGroup: What are some of the common reasons brands end up in that state? Is it a reputation thing, a lack of consumer trust, or a product failure?

Emily Hubbell: I think it's a lack of transparency and honesty, and that can show up in a few ways: False claims or cover-ups around a product, a product failing without an authentic or transparent response, or something said by a company spokesperson or leader that's offensive or alienates a customer base. Again, followed by a response that isn't authentic or transparent.

If the response isn't transparent, fast, and clear, that's what takes you from a crisis to bottoming out as a brand.

HexaGroup: Mark, can a brand ever fully recover from a genuine lack of trust or an ethics failure, or only from simply becoming irrelevant?

Mark Edwards: I think it can recover, but only if consumers believe the company has genuinely changed. Look at Good Good Golf and Callaway right now. How do they resurrect that? It's going to take a lot.

First of all, recovery requires accountability. Sometimes leadership changes are necessary at the top. You have to be transparent, and you need consistent proof over time that you've actually mended the fences.

Consumers may forgive a mistake, but they're far less likely to forgive a company that appears to be repeating the same behavior. Some companies make a mistake, learn from it, and rectify it. Others don't, and those are the ones we see go by the wayside.

HexaGroup: For a smaller company, or in any case, really, is there ever a scenario where reviving a name with a damaged reputation actually works from a PR standpoint, or is it always safer to start from scratch?

Mark Edwards: It could work if the old name still has significant recognition and positive associations that outweigh the negative. But the company has to directly address the past instead of pretending it never happened. That's the first thing you have to do — it's the first thing I teach in crisis communications. First, you admit it. You get ahead of the story.

When you try to mitigate things by not being accurate or honest, you're just digging a deeper hole. Starting over is the safer move once the name itself immediately triggers distrust.

HexaGroup: Let’s take McDonald's as an example, a brand huge enough that it could absolutely come back from a crisis. Let’s say they have a bad lettuce outbreak that’s getting people sick who have recently eaten a Big Mac. What's the first step? Acknowledge the problem, accept it, and then prove to the public it won't happen again?

Mark Edwards: Right. You have to admit it and own the responsibility for a mistake. Then you lay out a clear, understandable plan for how you're going to rectify it in a way that's easy for the average person to follow. Not a bunch of PR corporate speak.

You say, “Yes, we acknowledge there was bad lettuce in these Big Macs. Here's what we're doing about it: We've contacted the lettuce provider, we may switch providers, and we're adding more quality control on the front end so this doesn't happen again.”

You lay out a plan, and people will be forgiving, especially if they actually see the change. If they don't see the change, and it happens repeatedly, you may be gone forever.

HexaGroup: What's another reputational risk a company takes on when trying to make a comeback?

Mark Edwards: The risk is not being honest and trying to sweep things under the rug. You might have gotten away with that 20, 30, 40 years ago, but not today. People are far more savvy now than ever. They can get information instantly and learn far more about any crisis than they could decades ago.

The internet age has completely changed the landscape for public relations, and especially crisis communications, because the veil is lifted. You have to be 100% forthcoming. Admit your mistake and lay out a plan to mitigate the situation and make it right. If you don't, you're going down a rabbit hole, and you may never recover.

Nostalgia can be valuable, but it isn't enough

HexaGroup: Speaking of nostalgia, Emily, when is it smarter for a brand to retire and start over, rather than trying to bring the old name back?

Emily Hubbell: There's something about nostalgia that's genuinely powerful. But if you have a reputation issue so severe that it would take a Herculean effort to separate your brand name from the crisis attached to it, it's likely a better strategy to rebrand under a different name. And be authentic about it if someone asks for an explanation.

You cannot fulfill a legacy if a brand feels so toxic that you're never going to win back customers, or it could take ten years and bankrupt the company in the process. These processes take time and money, and you can calculate what you'd have to spend based on strategy.

So it really comes down to this: Do you care more about what you're offering, or the brand name you're offering it under?

HexaGroup: If it's about the product, rebrand it?

Emily Hubbell: Exactly. If the brand matters more to you than the product or what you're actually offering, that's probably a red flag.

HexaGroup: Looking at Enron, Kodak, Radio Shack, or any recent example of a brand attempting to come back from the dead: What's your honest first reaction? How could they get there?

Emily Hubbell: Radio Shack and Kodak are very particular cases where they simply didn't innovate and stay ahead of the market, whether that was hubris, thinking they knew better, or just not being ready. That's a misstep, not a customer-base alienation, and it's a very different kind of failure.

There's a whole generation of people who grew up going into RadioShacks, and a whole generation who learned about developing film with a Kodak camera. There's nostalgia for those brands because when they did what they did well, they did it very well.

HexaGroup: In their prime, we'll say.

Emily Hubbell: In their prime, or before the market shifted and they weren't even mid-adopters. They were laggards. Kodak famously held out against digital.

I see those as very different from Enron, where there was insider trading and deeply misleading conduct toward investors. The Enron scandal ruined a lot of people's lives. This isn't a question of whether you develop film the old-school way or go digital; this was life or death for many people, and especially here in Houston, it still leaves a huge scar.

HexaGroup: Mark, to close out, Enron is back in the headlines with its meme coin launch, with a company taking ownership of the name and using it as a parody. What are your initial thoughts on that? Does it actually prove anything about reviving a toxic brand from a PR perspective?

Mark Edwards: It can work, depending on the audience you're going for. If you're targeting a younger audience that doesn't know the history, that may land. It's going to fall flat with the people who remember the real damage the company did. But if you're going for a new audience — which I'm sure is the motive — you're probably willing to write off the never-Enron crowd to reach people who don't carry that history. From that angle, I can see the logic.

HexaGroup: For context, we're also sitting in Houston. That group is based out in California.

Emily Hubbell: I don’t think it’s a Texas-versus-everywhere-else thing. I think if you don't feel the impact of a brand's implosion firsthand, I can see why it might look like a funny marketing stunt. But in my mind, that's not what's actually being done here.

HexaGroup: And it wasn't just senior leadership who was impacted by what happened at Enron. It was a lot of people who worked hard and had no idea what was going on.

Emily Hubbell: And are probably still financially destroyed to this day. Everyone around here knows someone who worked at Enron. The company was massive.

I have no problem drawing a clear line between a brand that simply failed to evolve, which isn't a "dead brand" scenario in my book, and a brand that did something so unethical, so far outside what its customer base believed it stood for, that it caused real harm to the brand itself. To me, that's the difference.

HexaGroup: Mark, anything else you'd like to add?

Mark Edwards: Just that managing brand reputation is a lot more paramount in 2026 than it was in 1996, simply because of instant access to information. There's no hiding anymore.

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A legacy name can create awareness, spark nostalgia, and open the door to a conversation. But attention alone doesn't create trust. Before reviving, refreshing, or retiring an established brand, an organization needs to understand what stakeholders actually associate with that name, and whether its business, product, and reputation can genuinely support the story it wants to tell next.

Nostalgia may open the door. But only consistent, honest action keeps people inside the room.

HexaGroup helps organizations clarify their positioning, develop authentic messaging, and build strategies grounded in credibility and long-term growth.