Brands use nostalgic theme to expand their target market and create a link between generations
Today, many brands are jumping on the nostalgia bandwagon. This retro trend has become an international phenomenon and is affecting the entire marketing mix. Some brands have developed products evoking nostalgic flavor of childhood memories. In the food industry, for example, Chuao chocolatier has recently introduced a Rocky Road bar that contains salted almonds and vegan marshmallows. Other brands have chosen to re-run their best historical ads, such as the detergent brand Persil, for its 100th anniversary to capitalize on its longevity accompanying consumers in their lives from the "good old days" until now, thus enhancing brand credibility and authenticity. Finally, a nostalgic atmosphere can be achieved through the interior design. Jack Daniel’s whiskey has come up with a classic cool with a special edition to mark Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday. Launched last December at Las Vegas’ airport with interactive stations for tasting, viewing and listening to all things Frank Sinatra did, the initiative expanded to 200 airports, coinciding with the evocative “Legend” campaign.
Nostalgia can also respond to segmentation issues. Brands use nostalgic theme to expand their target market and create a link between generations. For example, to launch PlayStation 4, Sony has set up a YouTube campaign chronicling the evolution of the iconic gaming console, presenting a series of videos covering the product’s 19-year history. In the same vein, to foster the latest version of Internet Explorer from consumers who grew up in the ’90s, Microsoft has proposed a time-traveling journey via a two-minute video sporting “You grew up So did we” as a tagline.
Capitalizing on the emotions it arouses among consumers, nostalgia gives brands a sense of credibility, authenticity, durability and quality, as well as emotional bonding – thus attracting the interest of managers. Although marketing practitioners widely use nostalgia as a communication tool, no study has sought to define the conditions for its application in brand management. Given its impact on consumption, understanding what nostalgia means to consumers appears to be of particular importance.
The article is divided into four sections. The first section examines the interpretations of nostalgia in litterature. The second section explains why the use of nostalgia in brand management is relevant. The third section proposes four possible applications for nostalgia in brand communication management, related to four nostalgic consumers profiles. The last section emphasizes the main risks of nostalgic branding.
What is nostalgia?
While medicine presents nostalgia as the pathology that devastates persons physically away from their countries (nostos = return; algos= pain; Hofer, 1688), the great philosophers of the 18th century, Rousseau and Kant, described it as a regret for a period that has passed. In psychoanalysis, nostalgia is related to two poles: an object pole which considers nostalgia as a desire to go back to the womb and a narcissistic pole which states it as an identity injury. In the 20th century, sociologists associated nostalgia to the discontinuities of existence: individuals feel nostalgia during alteration stages in their lifes and use nostalgia to preserve their identity (Davis, 1979). Psychologists recognize two temporal approaches in the nostalgia concept: present (i.e. maladjustment to the environment; Rose, 1948) and future (i.e. an anguishing perception of the future; Nawas and Platt, 1965).
In marketing, academics suggest multiple definitions of nostalgia: a mood (Belk, 1990), a preference (Holbrook and Schindler, 1991), a state (Stern, 1992), a desire (Baker and Kennedy, 1994), an emotion (Holak and Havlena, 1998). Holbrook and Schindler’s definition (1991, p. 330) is undoubtedly the most cited reference: "A preference (general liking, positive attitude, or favourable affect) toward objects (people, places, or things) that were more common (popular, fashionable, or widely circulated) when one was younger (in early adulthood, in adolescence, in childhood, or even before birth". According to this logic, nostalgic brands are defined "brands that were popular in the past (and are still popular now), whereas the non-nostalgic brands as "brands that are popular now (but were less so in the past or did not exist in the past)" (Loveland, Smeesters and Mandel, 2010).
Why using nostalgia in brand communication?
• Nostalgia “an idealization system of a posteriori memories
A reason to justify the use of nostalgia in brands communication strategies is the idealization system of « a posteriori » memories. Nostalgic memories, recalled at the present, are not an identical copy from the past. Beyond memory failures linked to the age, nostalgia goes through the negatives aspects from different events. Nostalgic perspective is informative (acts selection among what have been an « a priori » past), transformable (in changing memory semantic contains), creative (in making up events). It translates into a gap between these situations perceived by embellishment. It is possible thus to distinguish several level of nostalgia, from real to simulated.
• Nostalgia and consumer - brand relationships
• Trans- generational