More than marketing: where nostalgia creates real value for brands

NASA is going back to the moon, living legend Celine Dion has announced a Paris residency (I'm signed up, natch), every celebrity you've ever heard of is telling us about what they were like in the '90s, 12 tons of KitKat are missing, and brands everywhere have rediscovered April Fool's Day (thanks, no doubt, to our old-new friend AI).

Nostalgia is all the rage, and brands leaning hard into nostalgia right now isn't random. It's the result of psychology, economics, culture and context all lining up at once.

The psychology of nostalgia

Nostalgia is incredibly powerful emotionally. Familiar memories (especially from childhood or teenage years) create feelings of comfort, safety, and identity. When people feel uncertain (economically or socially), they gravitate towards things that feel known and reassuring. That's been especially true in the post-pandemic era.

The economics of nostalgia

Nostalgia (done well) is a low-risk strategy for brands. Revival comes with built-in demand. Compared to launching something totally new, nostalgia-based products are easier to market and more likely to succeed.

It's also smart, because we are in a generational sweet spot right now. Millennials and older Gen Z, who came of age in the '90s and early '00s, are hitting their peak spending power stride. And so, we see brands bringing back things tied to that era: think this week's '90s edit' drop from M&S. It's not just memory, it's monetisable memory.

Of course, social media amplifies all of this. Nostalgia is highly shareable and algorithms reward familiar, emotionally resonant content, so brands keep feeding that loop.

Culture and context combining

Culture is being 'remixed' right now. Instead of totally new ideas, we're seeing reinterpretations of old styles, movies, and products, reimagined for today. It's safer creatively, and easier for audiences to latch onto. Something like over half of major studio Hollywood film production comes in the form of a remake, reboot or franchise sequel. Netflix has brought back weekly release formats for some of its shows, thwarting the series bingers but recreating the 'hive mind' group watch.

This is all being amplified by the upending of global 'norms' we have come to rely on, and the endless uncertainty and volatility we are all experiencing on a daily basis right now. It's hardly surprising that, in this context, we want to seek out the familiar and trusted. Most of us are less minded to take risks when everything around us feels like it could (literally) blow up at the drop of a hat.

It's also a great opportunity for established brands, who have struggled to compete with more youthful challenger upstarts. But how can you activate nostalgia, beyond social media and advertising campaigns?

So what?

From a brand pov, nostalgia only really 'works' if it also translates into relevant currency for today. Here are five ways established brands can turn our love of nostalgia into a strategic and distinctive asset, by:

• Positioning themselves as custodians of cultural memory, for example in the style of Levi's, which carries its historical context as a human (wearable) story.
• Leaning into heritage as a core part of brand identity, but (crucially) updated for today. Nintendo, for example, strongly pulls on its catalogue of nostalgic titles and 8-bit style, converting warm feelings from the past into experiences its audiences can enjoy today.
• Reframing 'old' as authentic, the original or high quality. A great example of this is Guinness, currently having roaring success with its new 0.0 offering.
• Building long-term equity around legacy. Think Barbie, redefining girl/womanhood with the recent release of the Chloe Kelly doll.
• Collaborating with customers, and letting them help shape the nostalgia narrative, like Coca-Cola inviting customers to vote on reviving retired flavours.

For any brand grappling with the question of how to cope with those pesky challengers, this stuff is gold. Your brand history is uniquely yours. If you can connect that to something people care about today, then you've built a bridge to that elusive, and hugely valuable, emotional connection with your customers.