Opinion

The good, the bad, and the bygone: Why nostalgia marketing isn’t everything

Sam Somers writes about how to be wary of nostalgia marketing given the shift in values post-pandemic, as well as the recent 80’s trends resurfacing amongst other reprises from pop-culture.

Nostalgia has been used as a powerful marketing tactic for decades, but that doesn’t mean it’s always a good one. Whether it’s Seinfeld’s famous lawyer, Jacki Childs, reprising his role to sell pretzels or Netflix’s very 1980s inspired billboard ads promoting fake brands from the Stranger Things universe, it’s become comfort food for consumers who want a quick fix – and some easy PR for companies. But as the world has shifted dramatically in the past three years, people have grown tired of the inauthentic and see-through values that brands frequently employ in marketing. Instead, what is in demand are values that focus on openness, honesty and authenticity.

From B Corporations to ESG policies, this time of dramatic change demands honesty. And nostalgia marketing isn’t always honest, in fact, it’s rife with falsehoods. It can romanticise past things in order to foster consumerism in the younger generations, meaning that as a comms professional or as a marketer, you need to be cautious when leaning on nostalgia marketing just because times are hard or it’s an easy win.

People revert to nostalgia in hard times because it’s easy to look back on how good things used to be. If we look at Millennials – who now make up 21.5% of the Australian population according to the 2021 Census – they are a generation who have lived through multiple once-in-a-lifetime economic crashes and disasters. They have lived through what is now commonly referred to on the internet as our societal peak: the late 1990s economic boom. There’s no doubt here that nostalgia comes on strong when you’ve had access to the internet from a young age. It’s a given.

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with the internet and, in turn, have constant, easy access to international culture and various sub-cultures of society. Because of this, trends shifted faster as the rate of technological change grows. For them, it’s easier to look back on the past when there’s just so much of it available.

So now you have Australia’s largest generation – internet natives with a congested and detailed history – all dreaming of simpler times, especially when the internet is rife with memes stating things like “born too late to afford a house, too early to become a TikTok star”. Of course, it’s not just Millennials but also other generations who are longing for the past because things seemed simpler before lockdowns, pandemics, economic crashes and 15-second videos.

And that’s just it. The growing window to the past is becoming increasingly wider for new generations. Gen Z – the people born in the shadow of the internet, those TikTok natives – are coming face to face with nostalgia marketing tactics, only they’re too young to have lived through the subject in question. There’s a 1980s reprise happening at the moment, filtered down through content and pop culture. Kate Bush’s 1985 song Running Up That Hill is topping charts around the world, mullets are in full non-ironic force and, some brands are harking back to the 1980s for their look and feel. What does that tell us? That you can feel nostalgia for a world you never knew – as long as you have the internet.

Speaking of the 1980s, the recent Top Gun: Maverick has taken more than $US1.35 billion at the box office. The thing to note here is that it is a perfect storm of talent, timing and nostalgia. According to Paramount, over 55% of Top Gun: Maverick‘s audience are above age 35. Considering the original film was released 36 years ago, well, you see what I’m getting at.

But all this being said, this doesn’t mean you should put nostalgia at the top of your comms strategy, especially anything specifically 1980s related. It needs to be carefully considered, authentically relevant, and used sparsely. Consumers are clued-in more than ever and it’s too easy to cross the line from nostalgic sensibility into gimmicky play.

Of course, you can focus on maximising nostalgia and expect to see results, especially if it’s targeted to the right audience. But you can’t always expect it to pay off in the long run. Gen Z are looming up before us (now 18.2% of the Australian population) and bringing with them a whole new value set. Plus, the past three years of uncertainty have really exposed the gigantic elephant in the room: dishonesty and unauthentic marketing. We’ve seen pay-per-post influencers dropping, and content-fillers should no longer reference 1990s cartoons – you can’t do nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake! There has to be a reason. A history, or affinity your brand has with it, otherwise it better be a damn good value-add for the audience.

Sam Somers

Sam Somers, communications consultant, SKMG

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