Chimps? They're so last season

First, it was the chimps. Now, the Tetley folk and the old Oxo family are making way for a new brand image. But messing about with an icon can be a risky game, says Meg Carter

First, it was the Oxo family, Colonel Sanders and the PG Tips chimps. Now, the Tetley tea folk look set to receive their P45s, as one of Britain's best-known brands opts for a face-lift. But will a royal guard, a wedding-hungry girlfriend and a dad taking part in a school sports day prove to be everyone's cup of tea? Adland awaits the public response to Tetley's strategy with interest, for overhauling an advertising icon can be a hit-and-miss affair.

Take Oxo, which waved bye-bye to the Oxo family three years ago, after the brand's owner at the time, Unilever, conducted research that revealed the family had become outdated and irrelevant for modern consumers. The subsequent sale of the brand to a new owner prompted a re-appraisal, which led to the arrival last month of a new, 21st-century Oxo family complete with contemporary references to "stir-fry" and "suck-butt" (new Oxo mum's reference to her daughter's boyfriend).

A similar U-turn is expected in coming months with the return of Captain Birds Eye to promote Birds Eye fish fingers. In 1998, the whiskery old sea dog referred to by his creator, Barry Day, as "Tony Hancock impersonating Robert Newton doing Long John Silver", was replaced by a six-foot, younger model with designer stubble. The new look failed to inspire and the advertising account moved agencies – to HHCL & Partners, which is now fine-tuning a new campaign to revive the original Captain.

Others have tinkered at the edges, fearful of throwing out the baby with the bath water. Mr Kipling's recent return to TV, for example, swapped the venerable brand spokesman's rich, earthy voice-over for a batty old duffer image, as a variety of characters referred to Mr Kipling's madcap antics off-screen. KFC, meanwhile, is honing a new, cool image with the relegation of the cartoon Colonel Sanders from all advertising... although Colonel Sanders the trademark lives on.

In Tetley's case – as with arch-rival PG Tips, which has replaced chimps with claymation birds – the creative shift was prompted by a desire to get consumers to look afresh at the brand. With UK tea sales static, Tetley and its advertising agency, D'Arcy, are hoping to generate interest by talking more about tea's health benefits and underlining its brand values. Its new commercial praises everyday folk who live life to the full, and assures us: "Tetley * U".

"Both campaigns have been extremely successful because their characters have been instantly recognisable," the marketing and development director of Tetley, Nigel Holland, explains. "More than that, the Tetley tea folk have embodied our brand with some pretty powerful values, most notably: trustworthiness. This new approach is about amplification rather than personality change – a shift from being seen as caring to being seen as compassionate."

The tea folk are still popular but, inevitably after 28 years as brand spokesmen, old-fashioned, adds the executive creative director of D'Arcy, Nick Hastings. "I don't see there being any risk in moving away from the tea folk," he insists. "So long as you make sure what you are replacing them with is stronger and better liked, consumers won't miss the old campaign."

Others, however, are more cautious. Nick Howarth, the managing director of HHCL, says: "Captain Birds Eye has been a fantastic advertising icon for over 35 years. It's always tempting to go for change, but campaigns don't last that long by chance – it's because they work."

Brett Gosper, chief executive of Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper which handles the "man from Del Monte" and Milk Tray "man in black" campaigns, adds: "You must weigh up the instant brand awareness of an established advertising icon against the potential negative of an entrenched or outdated image." In the case of Milk Tray it was deemed acceptable to update the brand icon (he now sports a black shirt instead of black rollneck and woos his lady with mental rather than physical agility). However the jury is still out on the man from Del Monte's fate.

Many long-standing advertising icons were created in a time when the advertising landscape was quite different, Howarth points out: "They date back to when there were just one or two terrestrial commercial channels and you knew if you bought the centrebreak of News at Ten, 90 per cent of your potential audience would see it."

Now, however, standing out from the crowd is far tougher. "It's far trickier to establish an advertising icon, so there is greater awareness of the potential dangers of getting rid of something people are so familiar with," Howarth says. "Giving an icon a face-lift can work if that icon can still say the right things about a brand. Start from scratch and you risk getting lost in competitive noise."

Not that Tetley seems too worried. It's confident the new strategy will be even more popular than the tea folk. And if it isn't? Well, both advertiser and agency are hedging their bets. The official line on the Tetley tea folk's current status is "resting" rather than "retired".