All That’s Old Is Hot Again: How Nostalgia Can Fuel Advertising

In this guest post, Tyler Greer (main photo), head of strategy at MediaCom Melbourne, is feeling nostalgic for nostalgia and, he adds, that could have a big benefit for ad creatives too…

They say that the cure for romanticising the past comes down to one word: dentistry. Meaning, the idea of sitting in a dental chair decades before proper sterilisation, painkillers and pleasant lighting is enough to have us all thankful we are living when we are. But cavities aside, the pull of the past is a potent, powerful feeling, and never more so that during times of uncertainty. Nostalgia, in popular culture, fashion and advertising is, well, so now.

If you hadn’t noticed – and you probably haven’t because such is the incremental creep of fashion shifts – the 90s are back. Perhaps every decade requires we get far enough away from it to forget the parts of it that sucked and to renovate the parts that were good into something amazing. Or perhaps we are just running out of new ideas. Whatever the case, the 90s are a thing right now, and that means more than just tragic Friends reunions.

It’s not the first-time a past era has imposed itself on the present one. Nostalgia, even amongst those who were barley around at the time they are feeling the fuzzies about, offers something powerful and it is something that brands, where they can get it right, can benefit from.

In today’s parlance, nostalgia offers authenticity. The past, as it presents itself to us in the present, offers a time in which experiences had more meaning, more realness, untroubled as it was by invasive technology and always-on social connection. Nostalgia also gives continuity; how we got to where we are and, perhaps, where we went wrong. It finds resonance in times of uncertainty. Not only do we merely take the best things of a time and leave behind the poorer parts, but we also reshape the past in our minds to extract from it what we need, adapting it for contemporary purposes.

Nostalgia may feel instinctively as a tool to draw in older audiences, but young ones often hold the key to it. They can blend a fuzzy notion of what past eras stood for and looked like into their own. It can already be seen in fashion, with the skinny jean being pronounced dead and buried, replaced by the very 90s look of straight leg and even – ye gods! – baggies. The cuts hold their nostalgic value whilst morphing into something fresh.

Nostalgia was on full global display at this year’s Superbowl. Not only was the half time show a feast of late-90/early-Naughties hip hop, brands also jumped on the current fixation with an era past. GM exhumed Austin Powers;  Paul Rudd and Seth Rogan took a Lays-inspired walk down memory lane; Planet Fitness employed Lindsay Lohan, along with a cast of other notable throw-backs; we even got Jim Carey’s classic Cable Guy return after 25 years. When the biggest advertising moment of the year is pulling us backward through the years rather than leveraging what is contemporary, the trend is easy to spot.

Interestingly, a yearning for the 90s can presently be found across the youth platform de jour, TikTok. Writer Virginia Heffernan, in a piece for Wired, finds plenty of good old 90s Gen X nihilism in the creative outlets blooming there. (And just so you kids get in on the joke, “teen spirit” refers to the 90s grunge anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.) This offers us an illustration of the old neatly intersecting with the new, finding interpretation in ways that are meaningful for today.

But besides the joy of seeing Christian Slater appear in contemporary shows, why should we care? Simply, because nostalgia sells. According to a study conducted in the Journal of Consumer Research, “…feeling nostalgic weakens a person’s desire for money. In other words, someone might be more likely to buy something when they are feeling nostalgic.”

Brands often employ the power of their heritage identity items. From retro packaging on FMCG and QSR products, through to the kinds of programs we love, nostalgia is a pervasive force in popular culture. Stranger Things appeals in large part because of its perfect capture of 1980s suburban America with its bike riding teens and shadow government conspiracy theories. In the US, Pizza Hut recently teamed up with PacMan for a shared promotion that blended legendary 80s game with AR and a pizza box to allow customers to play. The point here is less the game and more the usage of nostalgia as an entry point. And Burger King, in its first logo rebrand in two decades, carries a distinctly retro look.

In normal times, we might find decades separating the present and the era we feel nostalgic for. But these are not normal times. Qantas is tapping into a different kind of feeling in its new TVC, reminding us of how much we are missing the joys of travel. This is, overall, less nostalgia and more yearning, but it still offers a backward glance at a freedom we took for granted. We even see a parent holding not only a photo of herself childhood self at Disneyland, but the knowledge that her own kids may never have such an experience. ‘

Pre-pandemic, some of the most lucrative events on the global music touring scene were fuelled by nostalgia (along with, it should be said, less money coming from traditional music sales). In 2019, 10 of the most lucrative tours included Pink, The Rolling Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, and Bon Jovi. Together, these tour alone pulled over $1b. baby boomers have money to spend on experiences and like to feel young, sure, but every age group of boys wants to be in the same room as Keith Richards, even if he is old enough to be their grandfather.

For TV programmers, nostalgia is a reliable tool to draw audiences. This is especially true during Covid with back-catalogue titles like A Country Practice, Blue Heelers, All Saints all enjoying high numbers on BVOD. Shows like these seem so innocent, part of an Australian paradise lost as to be almost ironic….until we need them. Amazon’s recent betting on Packed to the Rafters, reimagined as Back to the Rafters to draw in older audiences; even Hey Hey its Saturday was given the defibrillator treatment, reanimated one more time.

This raises interesting opportunities for brands get involved. Retro-events on TV sponsored by brands re-producing their own retro packaging promotions; toy and games brands like Hasbro claiming Sunday night as ‘back-in-the-day’ family games night.

The challenge for brands is how best to tap into nostalgia; how to leverage cultural moments that look backwards in ways that can be brought to life today, and to do so without appearing gratuitous. That a fixation on the 90s should find a home on the most contemporary of media platforms, TikTok, perhaps demonstrates how comfortably the past and the present can co-exist. In 2021, when tapping into the cultural zeitgeist, perhaps we should be fixing our gaze on the trends of a quarter of a century on the past.