Revlon’s comeback play: 87 years of history as a launchpad
Revlon is rebuilding by treating 87 years of history as a launchpad. Here is what its Advertising Week 2026 update teaches brand managers.
When a brand goes quiet, the hardest audience to win back is not the next generation. It is the one that already bought it. That is the challenge Revlon put on the table at Advertising Week 2026.
“We had been quiet,” said Dana Medema, Revlon’s president of North America. “We had to reintroduce ourselves to our existing consumers.”
Back to the archive, not back in time
Revlon was founded in 1939 and created defining products such as the red Fire & Ice lipstick. But it also went through a bruising stretch: a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in 2022 and a re-emergence as a private company in 2023, with Michelle Peluso becoming CEO in 2024.
In April, Revlon named musician and actress Teyana Taylor and country star Megan Moroney as the faces of its “Revlon Be Unforgettable” campaign. The concept updates a Revlon platform from the 1980s and 1990s that once featured Cindy Crawford and Oprah.
Three edits to an old playbook
The brand did not just dust off the archive. It made three deliberate changes.
- New narrators. Earlier work leaned on a male voiceover; Taylor and Moroney now tell their own stories in their own voices.
- A shorter tagline. The old promise about unforgettable women wearing the brand was trimmed to “Revlon: Be unforgettable.” Jessica Henrichs, CEO of DonerColle Partners, said a six-second ad era demands that kind of cut.
- A behaviour-based target. Instead of generations, Revlon now courts “e glam,” which Medema described as efficient glam found from the 20s to the 60s.
That second point is not cosmetic. Tagline length is a media-format decision as much as a branding one.
Why heritage can be a launchpad
Heritage is a double-edged cue. It signals trust, proof and expertise, but it can also read as stale. Medema’s framing is the key: “There’s nothing wrong with being a heritage brand. There’s something wrong with standing still.”
The archive, in other words, is raw material, not a script. Revlon points to its 72 Super Lustrous shades as evidence of colour authority, while the talent and tagline make the promise feel current.
Beauty is now packed with disruptive brands living outside the drugstore. Older players such as Maybelline and Bath & Body Works have also leaned on contemporary talent, but Revlon’s bet is that history should be an asset, not an apology.
What to do about it
If your brand has accumulated equity, do not bury it. Update who speaks for you, compress the core promise for short-form attention, and segment by routine or need instead of age. Let new consumers see relevance and existing consumers feel remembered.
Source: Digiday
