In “Mad Men,” Don Draper renames the wheel in Kodak's new slide viewer as the “carousel,” leveraging childhood nostalgia to create a deeper bond with the product.
As a former advertising account executive, I felt contractually obligated to watch “Mad Men.”
I didn’t make it past the first season, but one scene sticks with me to this day: Don Draper’s pitch for the new Kodak slide projector technology, which he renames “The Carousel.” In the pitch, Draper says that “new” is a shiny lure for the customer, but that nostalgia is a more subtle, but more powerful trigger.
The word nostalgia was coined in the 17th century by a medical doctor as a combination of Greek words that translate as the pain of missing home—literally homesickness. In today’s vernacular, nostalgia means the feeling of remembering the past with wistfulness—still a bittersweet combination, but with varying emphasis on the bitter or the sweet, depending on the application.
In marketing and advertising, nostalgia can be a powerful tool to tie products and brands to customers’ fond memories. However, it’s a tricky tool to use given the often-complex emotions or connections surrounding past experiences.
Our audiences view the past through the lens of time, unreliable memory and changing values, and those changes can have a big effect on an audience’s response to a call to nostalgia—as some organizations and brands have found.
To successfully use nostalgia in advertising or branding, organizations should consider the following:
Whatever you’re trying to create nostalgia around—a time, place, product, brand, person—has to have an important connection to the specific target audience. Your target consumers have to care about the “home” you’re asking them to be nostalgic for. It has to be something they recognize and have a strong tie to.
For example, in September 2021, Nick Jr. celebrated the 25th anniversary of “Blues Clues” by bringing back the original host, played by actor/musician Steve Burns. In a viral video post on Twitter, Burns revived his persona as the original host “Steve” in front of a Blues Clues background to update his story and reconnect with the audience that grew up watching him.
If you were a former fan (or, like me, the parent of fans), you immediately recognized the background, the costume and Steve’s voice and cadences. And, given the mid-pandemic timing, audiences were looking for familiar, comforting messages. This one tweet received nearly 1.8 million reactions, 29K comments, and 733K retweets.
It’s not enough, however, to remind people of something they remember and try to tie another brand to it. Your audience also needs to perceive that there is an authentic connection between the two.
If an audience doesn’t perceive your brand or organization as having either ownership of or a genuine connection to the past, you come across as appropriating the message, goodwill or brand rather than being the successor to or caretaker of it. Focusing on authenticity also helps your brand avoid charges of mawkish sentimentality.
During the Super Bowl, an ad paid for by the American Values 2024 Super Pac repurposed graphics, messaging and the jingle from John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign. Some in the Kennedy family and in the Democratic Party objected to the use of the commercial and jingle for two reasons. The first is the perceived difference between the values and positions of JFK vs. RFK Jr. The second is that the Kennedys are perceived as Democratic Party royalty, and RFK Jr. is running as an Independent.
The jury is still out on whether this commercial’s reach and the conversations it’s engendered will overcome the questions about its authenticity, use of and “ownership” of the Kennedy brand.
It’s not enough to bring up memories or familiar tropes or events, even with an authentic connection. Effective use of nostalgia requires careful alignment with the emotions and values that will be engendered in the audience.
You’ll notice I didn’t say “that you/your brand/your campaign will engender …” That’s because with nostalgia, you can’t control precisely what the audience will feel. Just think about the complex emotions that concepts such as “home” or “family” can bring up. Audience analysis and consumer research can go a long way to help avoid this pitfall.
In October 2020, Kraft pulled its #SendNoods ad campaign for its Mac and Cheese brand based on tremendous backlash on social media. The campaign tried an edgier approach, which did not go over well with its traditional audience of moms whose kids are fans of the product. While this wasn’t a nostalgia campaign per se, Mac and Cheese in the blue box is nearly synonymous with comfort food and an audience of American moms with kids of a certain age. The mismatch in values and audience spelled the end for the campaign.
Authentic alignment of your brand with the memories, emotions and values of your audience can make for effective use of nostalgia in advertising and branding and create powerful connections with your audience. Done right, your campaigns can provide that bittersweet call to home or the past that leads to your brand’s future.
