According to the New York Times, we experience feelings of nostalgia somewhere between one to four times per week. Turn on the TV or scroll through your phone and you understand why this might be the case. Nostalgia is all around us; there’s nostalgia in advertising, commercials, and music.
But why do other people encourage a trip down memory lane? And how does nostalgia work in the first place?
What is Nostalgia, Anyway?
The word “nostalgia” comes from the Greek compound nostos, meaning to “come home”, and algo, or pain. It was coined by Johannes Hofer, a Swiss physician, in 1968 regarding an unknown mental disease affecting nationals stationed overseas. This ailment, treated as a mystery ailment at the time, is what we today call homesickness.
Synonymous with the word homesickness is nostalgia. Nostalgia is an affectionate feeling for the past, especially for a happier, easier, or better time. It’s something you experience when you think about fond memories, such as time spent with friends in college, or how much fun you had on your last family vacation.
When people are nostalgic, they feel less lonely, bored, and anxious—in a way, it silences our thoughts. And friends and family who share nostalgic memories, by looking at old photos and videos, for example, are closer and more connected.
Memories can also lead to a temporary state of sadness or unhappiness, so much that we will take action to return to that state. We feel as though things were better and so we feel motivated make a change.
It’s for that reason that marketers use nostalgia in advertising. It’s all about using familiar concepts to build trust for new brands and ideas, or encourage impulse buying. They want us to believe that their product fills the void. What better way to convince a customer of the value of a product by linking it to something we already love?
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How is Nostalgia Used in Marketing and Advertising?
Nostalgia in advertising is the equivalent of comfort food. Both carry sentimental value and provide us with feelings of security. Adults, when under emotional stress, turn to food associated with temporary pleasure, like ice cream, chocolate, or French fries (Food that is habit-forming). Similarly, nostalgia in advertising leads to distress, such as thinking about how things used to be better, and so we purchase products or services to improve our mood.
A quick way that nostalgia can be induced is through music. As humans, we’re skilled at recognizing music we’ve heard before and associating it with memories. For example, music can provoke recollections, such as feelings of what it what was like to be a child or college student.
An experiment held at Tilburg University in the Netherlands showed that listening to old songs does not just make people feel good but also warmer physically. As people listen to popular music and revisit their past, they experience a warm glow and their body temperature increases.
Music played in grocery stores has a profound impact on your shopping experience. Loud, up-tempo music has been shown to move people quicker, resulting in less time spent in the store. Slower, down-tempo music moves shoppers at a more gradual, easy-going speed. And nostalgic music? You will feel both a warm glow and the need to buy more stuff to feel good.
Why Nostalgia in Advertising Is Highly Effective
A lot has happened in the past decade: The world’s first iPad was released, Osama Bin Laden was killed, and a song named “Gangnam Style” took over the world.
Reflect on the things that happened over the last 10 years, both on a global scale and on a personal level, and you see that time passed rather quickly. This is especially true when we dwell on positive memories. Perhaps you landed a great job, met the women of dreams, or welcomed a newborn baby. The most beautiful moments always seem to fly by.
We might also consider the past to be simpler times, a time when we had fewer things to worry about. Technology was simpler, crime rates were lower, and the world was just a better place overall—or so we think. The point is, when we remember the good old times, no matter how short-lived they appear to be, we get emotional. And when our emotions are engaged, our sense of rationality becomes temporarily ineffective.
Succumb to the power of nostalgia and you can’t decide with reason or logic. An analogy I often draw upon comes from social psychologist Jonathan Haidt: It’s like our emotional side is an elephant and our rational mind is a rider sitting on top; When the elephant runs amok, it is very difficult for the rider to take control of it.
If we see an advertisement that brings up old memories, we temporarily lose control of our purchase decisions. Put differently, our “emotional elephant” is running amok. When we think life was better in the past, we’re tapping into an old emotional connection that incentivizes us to behave in a way that makes us happier. With nostalgic marketing, this means we make an impulse purchase.
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Some Nostalgia in Advertising Examples
There are many nostalgia marketing campaigns that have been highly effective. A common trend in advertising campaigns is to use familiar childhood characters, such as the Cookie Monster or Tony the Tiger, because they are likely to elicit positive emotions.
Apple’s timer commercial starring the Cookie Monster, a blue Muppet character from the long-running children’s television show Sesame Street, went viral on social media platforms in April 2016. The advertisement displayed Siri’s hands-free feature and ability to understand the Cookie Monster’s voice, while connecting the iPhone 6s with much-loved childhood memories. Unsurprisingly for an advertisement starring a well-known childhood character, nostalgia was one of the top emotional responses that drove social media shares.
In a 2020 advertisement, Kellogg’s Canada partnered with the National Hockey League (NHL) to inspire Canadians to “stay energized” during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The cereal brand reconnected with young adults watching hockey through nostalgia for Tony the Tiger, the advertising cartoon mascot for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes breakfast cereal. As a part of the campaign, Kellogg’s created a 15-second commercial showing a young hockey fan scoring a goal assisted by Tony the Tiger. The fan continues by celebrating with holding a bowl of Frosted Flakes, a product that many hockey fans connect with happy childhood memories.
The bottom line is that nostalgic ads are an effective way to engage a target audience, but they are also a powerful force that marketers can abuse. As the consumer, you must understand that nostalgic commercials aim to raise your emotional level. You must, therefore, try your best to extinguish nostalgic feelings—that is, if you don’t want to be influenced. Otherwise, your “emotional elephant” will run amok, which will inevitably lead to purchase decisions you regret later on.