What is Nostalgia Marketing?
“Essentially, nostalgia marketing aims to capture (or rather, re-capture) your audience’s attention by tapping into older and more familiar trends from the past — and we know that it works.” (According to Autopilothq.com). Basically, it is tapping into our memories to evoke a feeling, preferably a good feeling. It is similar to emotional marketing and some brands have and will continue to use it extremely effectively.
How is Nostalgia Marketing used in business?
HubSpot.com put it very nicely when they say:
“Nostalgia marketing is the advertising equivalent of comfort food.
In a time when most marketing focuses heavily on the future, it transports us back to a simpler place where our current problems don’t matter and the hustle and bustle of modernity just melts away.”
Brands that have products that were around in the 80s or 90s can use this style of marketing particularly effectively. However, brands like the Australian Tourist Board have tapped into the nostalgia of the film, Crocodile Dundee, very effectively to market their country as a tourist destination.
Brands like Nintendo can throw us back in time to memories of older products we played to sell modern day products.
Tesco also more recently brought us back in time to TV characters that we might have been familiar with, such as Mr. Blobby!
Are there elements of Nostalgia Marketing that might work in my business?
Quite possibly, yes! What are the memories that you have from your childhood that might evoke an emotional reaction today? I had this conversation with a business owner very recently. She said that a post that she put up referring to nostalgia products from the 1980s had the biggest reach and engagement of ANY post EVER on her business social media account.
If your business was established longer than 10-15 years ago, you might be able to share photos of the team from back in the day. Or you might be able to show the timeline of a product and how it has progressed over the years. Perhaps another option might be to show pictures of your business, particularly if it is a retail shop, of what it was like years ago and what it is like now.
Did you change your logo over the years? Perhaps you might want to show the progress of this logo or brand over the period of time. You really could have such fun with it!
What if my business doesn’t lend itself to Nostalgia Marketing?
That’s fine! Not every business does. Sometimes not every business can use it. I must certainly remember to keep a bank of content of photos, logos and progress of my business journey over the years! Watch out for 2030 versions!!
I wish my grandparents were still alive sometimes (albeit, they’d now be very very old!) as they ran a very successful hardware business for years. I would love to do their marketing for them now. There are some gorgeous colour and black and white photos of both them and their business taken over the years. They would now make excellent content for this exact subject of nostalgia marketing.
Remember when…
If you are going to use nostalgia marketing, be sure to use it correctly. The phrases and content you use are particularly important. Words such as “remember when” or “ever daydream about” are very effective when using nostalgia marketing. Refer to events in the past, an older product, a previous logo, a previous premises, an old advert or a former team. All work well, depending on how they are used.
If you’d like some inspiration on how you can use this form or any form of marketing, we’d love to help and provide you with that inspiration. Just get in touch!