Lots of legacy brands in Asia have operated under an unspoken assumption – market leadership, once achieved, can be maintained through sporadic change and occasional campaigns. But it’s time for a wake-up call.
Today’s market dictates that dominance is no longer self-sustaining. It has to be actively designed for.
What’s emerging in its place is a fundamental shift: smart heritage brands are increasingly relying on ‘design systems’ as the core infrastructure for growth. Not as visual guidelines or brand toolkits, but as operating systems that govern how a brand behaves, scales, and stays recognisable across thousands of micro-moments.
From dominance to discipline
Many of Asia’s most established brands still carry immense equity. But equity without coherence is fragile. In markets shaped by quick commerce, D2C acceleration and short-form content, brand experience is no longer episodic; it’s continuous, fragmented, and super-fast.
I’m seeing a clear shift in client briefs, away from ‘what should we say?’ and towards ‘how do we stay coherent everywhere we show up?’
Campaigns still generate attention, but they no longer guarantee memory. What does is consistency at scale. And that’s where design systems have become strategic. I’m seeing a clear shift in client briefs, away from “what should we say?” and towards “how do we stay coherent everywhere we show up?”
System-led trust at scale
Take jeweller Tanishq. In a category historically dominated by unbranded jewellers, the brand doesn’t rely solely on advertising. It built a coherent system spanning retail environments, packaging, digital interfaces and sub-brands such as Mia and Rivaah.
What makes this system powerful is not uniformity but controlled variation – each sub-brand has its own identity, yet remains unmistakably part of the larger architecture. That balance allows the brand to expand without diluting recognition.
Tiger Balm faced a similar challenge. By the 1990s, the Singapore brand was being described by its own management as “something our grandparents used”. Rather than abandoning its heritage, Haw Par Corporation kept the iconic red-and-gold hexagonal jar and prowling tiger – both powerful recognition assets – while systematically extending the portfolio into active lifestyle and sports recovery categories.
Revenue from its healthcare segment nearly doubled in three years. Heritage, it turned out, was the asset. Rigidity was the liability.
Vitasoy, the Hong Kong soymilk brand founded in 1940, took a similar path. Its recent evolution reframed plant-based heritage as actively relevant to contemporary health-conscious consumers, not a nostalgic relic but a daily practice. The ‘Planting Goodness Every Day’ platform gave a coherent structure to a broad portfolio across fragmented touchpoints, reconnecting with younger consumers who knew the brand but had stopped choosing it.
When the system becomes the idea
In newer digital-first categories, the role of design systems is even more explicit. The Whole Truth built its entire brand proposition around ingredient transparency – and that principle is embedded into its design system. Ingredient-first packaging, explanatory hierarchy, and direct copywriting are not stylistic choices, they’re structural rules. Here, the design system is the brand strategy made visible.
For Dabur Réal and Dabur Red, the challenge was harmonisation rather than reinvention. A bold fruit ‘window’ device for Réal and an evolved wave motif for Red now function as recognition anchors – identifiable whether on a supermarket shelf, a 200-pixel ecommerce tile, or a delivery bag. What this replaces is isolated creative execution. Dabur is now building continuity across touchpoints that no longer behave like a linear brand journey.
When systems are absent, fragmentation follows
The risks of not having a coherent system are equally visible. Mamaearth initially gained traction with a clean, ingredient-led visual identity that stood out in digital retail. But rapid expansion across categories without system discipline created inconsistency – different product lines began to behave like separate brands, weakening overall recognition.
Traditional campaigns are not disappearing, but their role is changing. They’re no longer the sole architecture of the brand, rather activations within it.
This is the hidden cost of growth without design systems, every new extension adds complexity faster than coherence can absorb it.
Traditional campaigns are not disappearing, but their role is changing. They’re no longer the sole architecture of the brand, rather activations within it. I’m seeing design systems perform the heavier lifting, ensuring that whether a consumer encounters a brand on a delivery app, a shelf, a social feed or in a store, it’s instantly recognisable, emotionally consistent and structurally coherent.
Ashwini Pable is Consulting Director, Brand Strategy, at bluemarlin.
