Mood 1: The Power of Nostalgia
RETURNING TO AN AGE OF INNOCENCE
When scepticism is ‘de rigeur’ and disillusionment is the status quo — is appealing to the child within us the most powerful marketing ploy devisable?
Nostalgia is indeed an Achilles Heel for the vast majority of us. It makes our heart pang — flooding us with memories, tapping into a mix of complex inner emotions. Interestingly, although it’s an intimate emotive journey, it can also be a collective one: Nostalgia has the power to engage individuals, draw us together, attach us to a product and ally us to a brand. This evocative hook embeds products with connotations of meaning, and humanises the affiliated brand.
Tapping into positive nostalgic memories triggers emotions strong enough to drive marketing campaigns and encourage consumption. Essentially the trick is that nostalgia connects us to our roots, reminding us where and how we belong; increasing the chances that the consumer will engage with what is being presented.
Within the Transformation Economy this is certainly a movement we will see more of. Although ‘nostalgia marketing’ is not a new strategy, it’s one that’s showing signs of amplifying in reach and impact.
Moschino x My Little Pony
Moschino x Transformers
Fila x Pokemon
In Fashion, we’ve recently seen direct use of ‘nostalgic content’ within collections. A celebration of our affection for the past, and a clear identifier that these shared stories are lovingly woven into who we are today.
Moschino boldly led the way with My Little Pony and Transformers prancing down the runways. Similarly Fila are launching a new collection of Pokemon studded trainers, that were predicted to sell-out before even hitting the shops. Some Xennials, and the large majority of Millennials and Gen-Z are proving to be the perfect target for content of this nature.
Although cases as these are super-desirable and happy-go-lucky, the impact is over in an instant. This is Nostalgia ‘on the surface’. Looking ahead, brands are going to have to do more than just revisit those golden oldies’ Sure, Millennials lose it for arcane referencing (nothing wrong with that!), but with what we know of their loss of trust in commercial entities, they are also searching for originality.
For the Nostalgia factor to really exert its full potential it needs to be imbued in meaning. For Brands not to become irreverent when tapping into Nostalgia, they need think long-term — incorporating engaging narratives and purpose-driven content.
“millennial pink”
In 2017 Milan Design Week was pretty in pink — with the arrival and dominance of a candy-esque shade of blush identified “millennial pink”.
A colour telling of it’s time with it’s happy yet slightly muted tone.
Interestingly although we’re repeatedly hearing that millennial pink is over, we’re seeing an increasing number of new environments, especially in the hospitality sector, decorate themselves lavishly in this pretty tone. Perhaps the desire to dream and escape is still more present than we’d like to think?
Bruce Mau’s Guatemala project
This is a case of Nostalgia used to fundamentally recover and build the foundations of a culture. The country was brought together and reminded of their strong roots.
High up on the scale of meaningfulness-by-Nostalgia is a project by Bruce Mau Design. In 2004, a group of Guatemalan leaders asked Bruce Mau to design a movement that would allow the people of Guatemala to dream again.
After 36 years with a culture of war and death, the citizens had lost all sense of a united vision for the country. Bruce Mau Design developed the multi-year communications project ‘Culture of Life’ with the aim to allow the country to dream again.
Campaigns, events and public programs were designed to bring the country together in a positive, hopeful and self-sustaining movement going forward. One of the campaign statements read: Remember the days when Guatemala touched the world. Ricardo Arjona sang. Juan Doe ran. Jaime Vinnale climbed.
“The country was called Guate when the Spanish arrived, but the Spanish hated it so they called it ‘Guatemala’ — which means bad Guate. And how would you like to grow up in the United States of bad place?… so we added an extra ‘A’ and we launched a movement called the Guateamala movement. Amala is the love of — ‘The love of Guate’.”
— Extract from ’24 Principles for Massive Change’, Bruce Mau’s talk at SXSW 2018
London Dreaming: Uniqlo + Tate Modern
To mark the relaunch of Tate Modern in 2016, fashion retailer Uniqlo created the campaign ‘London Dreaming’, exploring the powerful effect that creativity can have on the world.
Through various activations, the public were invited to imagine their own creative utopia. The visions were displayed both in Uniqlo stores and within the new Tate Modern.
This is Nostalgia with a different lens; as rather than uniting us in the past, visitors were brought together in a powerful collective dream for the future.
(A side-note to this example, is that Uniqlo have established solid partnerships within art & culture: They work with MoMA to enable free access to the museum every Friday evening, and they orchestrate ‘Unqilo Tate Lates’ — a monthly event at Tate Modern that celebrates art, music and community.)
The impact of technology, combined with it’s sister topic ‘the information overload’, means that cross-generational consumers are showing increasing signs of Nostalgic behaviours. Young consumers are reminiscing a time with fewer options and slower living; dreaming of a past not even experienced!
In his talk at SXSW on ‘The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing’, Daniel Pink explained that life is lived in episodes, and that we are naturally imbuing our lives with meaning by drawing closures and conclusions. We love the last piece of chocolate — even more when we know it’s our last one! Perhaps this explains the power of Nostalgia — when we get closer to what feels like an ending, or when we are reminded of a distant episode of life, we are more likely to add a little extra meaning.
