Don­ny Osmond attrib­ut­es his longevi­ty to what he calls the Four Rs: Retool, Rebuild, Rein­vent, and Reboot. “The key word is rein­ven­tion. You con­stant­ly rein­vent,” Osmond said. “No mat­ter what you do in life, you have to do the Four Rs. You can’t real­ly lay back on your suc­cess­es.”

Osmond is no George Clooney, but he has had an incred­i­bly long career that start­ed onstage along­side his broth­ers with hits like “One Bad Apple” and also includes Bey­once-like solo star­dom with “Pup­py Love”.

In fact, at Adobe Sum­mit, Osmond said there was a time he received a let­ter from Swe­den addressed sim­ply, “Don­ny Osmond,” lead­ing him to con­clude, “I was big­ger than San­ta.” Where he ranks rel­a­tive to San­ta today is debat­able, but his five-decade-long career is, if noth­ing else, tes­ta­ment to endur­ing rel­e­vance. To wit: The Don­ny Osmond brand has at times also includ­ed a vari­ety series, a talk show and a Vegas show with his sis­ter Marie, as well as a Don­ny Osmond doll from Mat­tel along with game shows and books.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=4q4ZtbY52og
https://youtube.com/watch?v=XqwLMqhcdps

When his brand seemed at risk of fad­ing into obliv­ion in the 1980s, he revived his pop­u­lar­i­ty with the song “Sol­dier of Love”, which led to the title role in a straight-to-video pro­duc­tion of “Joseph and the Amaz­ing Tech­ni­col­or Dream­coat, as well as the singing voice of Cap­tain Li Shang in Mulan’s I’ll Make a Man Out of You, which, curi­ous­ly, Sum­mit atten­dees were invit­ed to sing along with him and Adobe’s vice pres­i­dent of busi­ness devel­op­ment and strat­e­gy, John Mel­lor.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=tMHWrg4qZWQ

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, he isn’t done yet. Not­ing Net­flix and Ama­zon are great out­lets, Osmond said he has a con­cept for a new vari­ety show he’s going to pitch. Cit­ing flaws in recent attempts from the likes of Neil Patrick Har­ris, Osmond added, “I know exact­ly where to take this. Peo­ple get vari­ety wrong – they throw every­thing in. You can’t do that. You can’t over­load peo­ple with vari­ety. You have to give them the best of the best.” Here’s how the Don­ny Osmond brand has evolved from 1963 to 2016:

But even a brand in the process of rebuild­ing must remain true to itself. That’s a les­son Osmond said he learned from Elvis. “The the­ater is a place where peo­ple come to dream in pub­lic and you’re in charge of that dream. You’re manip­u­lat­ing people’s emo­tions,” Osmond said. “I learned that from Elvis. He was per­form­ing at the Hilton. I saw his clos­ing show and he had the audi­ence in the palm of his hand. I was lov­ing his show, but ana­lyz­ing it…and the night after, in his dress­ing room, he stayed to watch our open­ing – he always sent us flow­ers in the shape of a gui­tar – and we watched the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the King of Rock and Roll to the guy who invit­ed us over to have steaks.” The les­son? “Keep it real. Peo­ple want it real,” Osmond said.

But beyond authen­tic­i­ty and an oblig­a­tion to engage, brands have to real­ize, in the end, they actu­al­ly belong to their audi­ences. And that in part means giv­ing those audi­ences what they want. “You have to change and evolve, but you have to be care­ful not to alien­ate your audience…I was doing a show in Stat­en Island and the audi­ence want­ed to hear ‘Pup­py Love,’ so I end­ed up mak­ing fun of the song with a punk ver­sion,” Osmond said. “After the show, a lady stopped me and asked why I made fun of ‘Pup­py Love,’ and I said, ‘It’s my song. I can do what I want,’ and then she said some­thing that changed my per­cep­tion: ‘You may have had a hit with that song, but it was a big part of my child­hood mem­o­ries.’ Now I treat it with respect and don’t alien­ate it and try to build upon it.”

Reinvent

Call­ing it the “hard­est and scari­est thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Osmond was also able to con­nect with new audi­ences on Sea­son 9 of Danc­ing with the Stars in 2009.

“It opened up a whole new audi­ence,” Osmond said. “I was doing a show at the Flamin­go after­ward and a ten-year-old boy was in the front row and want­ed to shake the hands of a cham­pi­on and said, ‘I didn’t know you could sing, too.’” But Osmond said that’s anoth­er secret of main­tain­ing brand rel­e­vance. “You have to get out of your com­fort lev­el. You have to con­stant­ly be look­ing at dif­fer­ent things,” he added.

Reboot

Osmond diver­si­fied beyond enter­tain­ment in 2014 with the launch of a home fur­nish­ings busi­ness, Don­ny Osmond Home. It’s a con­cept Osmond said he and his wife talked about as a hob­by, but it “has blown up into a huge brand with fur­ni­ture and acces­sories all over coun­try.” Fur­ther, Osmond not­ed, “I can’t just say, ‘Okay, go sell it for me,’” so he will be at upcom­ing launch­es in Nebras­ka, Okla­homa and Texas. “It you want to be suc­cess­ful, you have to get involved,” he added. “If you want to be suc­cess­ful, sur­round your­self with suc­cess­ful peo­ple.”