When what was once old is suddenly new again
Marketers do love using nostalgia in their advertising to breath new life into old brands.
And who could blame them. It obviously works for some.
On Sunday we saw the return of Smith’s loveable alien the Gobbledok on TV.
It followed the return of Pantene’s brand ambassador Rachel Hunter and its old tagline “It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen” first used in 1992.
Meanwhile, Ajax Spray n’ Wipe’s frantic housewife played by Paula Duncan recently reprised her role 22 years after the first TV ad went to air.
But brands do have to tread a careful path when going down this route.
Such an approach may work well for snack food brands, but for other consumer goods categories, not everyone wants to remember the years gone by, or just how much they’ve aged.
After all, not everyone looks like Rachel Hunter 18 years down the track and no amount of reformulated shampoo is going to change that.
Camille Alarcon
Well done to all of these. There is a time when communications becomes part of the equity of the brand. So if its an equity (i.e. it has value) why not use it.
User ID not verified.
They’ve also started re-running those Chicken Tonight ads, it’s not even a reboot just the same crappy old 90s ad with the stomach-churning product shots of congealed chicken casserole. I thought MasterChef was turning us into a nation of gore-mets, but maybe not…
User ID not verified.
I wrote about the marketing of consumer nostalgia last year re: the Barney Banana reboot.
Why come up with a new ad and whip up ‘viral’ activity around it, when you can tap into an existing well of consumer goodwill surrounding your old ads?
User ID not verified.