Brands, are increasingly turning towards the aesthetics of nostalgia. ‘Looking backwards’ is a key cultural concern. What does all this retro-spection mean for broader culture, and how can a sense of reflection be usefully employed by brands?

The standard explanation for the current growth of the ‘nostalgia industry’ is that this is motivated by escapism. This is very easy to understand. Financial headwinds, wars, and weather anomalies are all encouraging a retreat from the now into something fuzzier, rose-tinted, and pleasantly associated with our responsibility free youth. Certainly, a number of brands use nostalgic imagery and communications that convey a sense of innocence and connect us to a time when our concerns were more simple and whimsical.

First Great Western’s Famous Five themed communications for example, transport us into a carefree vintage world of summer holiday adventures, filled with picnic lunches, sunny vistas, and “lashings of ginger beer”. This is an emotionally potent space, filled with positive potential. As one YouTube viewer of the recent GWR advert comments:

It is easy to understand the seductive nature of retro and the move towards nostalgia when it carries this possibility for emotional engagement.

Nostalgia is not limited to the marketing of products and services, it is also increasingly big business in the media. For evidence of this impact, we need only to look at the plethora of recent and forthcoming reboots such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Harry Potter TV series, Scrubs, Cobra Kai (The Karate Kid), Quantum Leap and even the Clueless musical. Nostalgia is not only opening hearts, it is also opening wallets.

The restoration of these properties allows creators the opportunity to reflect on and play with the cultural mores and aesthetics of their period of original creation. Last year, Disney Plus’s Rivals represented a playful, kitsch and transgressive sense of 80s nostalgia, celebrating all of the ‘greed is good’ culture, bold fashions, and seemingly carefree sexuality of the time, though to its credit Rivals also tackled darker aspects of sexual exploitation in this era.

Of course, you cannot step into the same river twice, and the return of the signifiers of the past, does not mean the full return of their meanings. And while Rival’s retains the  transgressive spirit of the original, there is a new layer of knowing camp and escapist joy to the whole thing.

Referencing a well-worn aesthetic, can also be a great way to introduce a new brand or product, and thus of “familiarising the strange”. In rapidly evolving categories such as non-alcoholic beverages what is ‘cutting edge’ is often rapidly replaced, so instead, opting-out of relentless newness by leaning into the vintage aesthetic can communicate something both more enduring and familiar. Non-alcoholic aperitivo brand Ghia, for example, uses retro typography, vintage photography filters and kitsch design styles to communicate a sese of an enduring presence in a category swirling with new currents of ephemeral meaning.

Arriving as it has in the 2020s Ghia’s evocation of and aesthetic of fulsome 1970s indulgence, all plumped up colours and tactile curves, is paired with a sense of contemporary irony such as the sprig of Leylandii pictured in a drink, quietly critiquing the more kitsch excesses of the 70s indulgence aesthetic enabling its use for a proposition that delivers a more restrained ideal of consumption.

The return to the past can take us into more challenging spaces. While the Tradwife movement, influenced by the more confining gender roles of the 1950s, may seem fringe, influencers and content showcasing this lifestyle are racking up millions of views and interactions online, and promoting gender ideals that, while cosily framed in nostalgia, many will find regressive.  

Of course, one way to avoid any complex political implications is to promote a sense of nostalgia for a time that never really existed. Coca-Cola’s Dreamworld variant for example, draws upon a hyperreal aesthetic inspired by the mashup repurposing and recontextualization of early digital signifiers by the vaporwave movement, as seen on the cover of Mackintosh Plus’s album Floral Shoppe, for example.  

Similarly, the lyric video for Chappell Roan’s Good Luck, Babe! Embraces an artificially heightened sense of 90/00s early internet culture, such as Geocities style tiled layouts, WordArt, and lo-res gifs with a filtering lens of VCR style distortion and warping. Proving that even a hyperreal mashup of somewhat anachronistic signifiers can still communicate a sense of nostalgia.

Of course, you can never really return. Whether the construction of nostalgia presented by a brand is an overt fantasy collage or is lovingly recreated through the restoration of original typefaces, logos and taglines sourced from the vaults, all nostalgia is somewhat fictional, a painting in a gallery unfastened from its contextual frame and floating on the breeze down the corridor. Due to this if we are to meaningfully harness its potential, we must be mindful of the following:

3 Key Takeaways for Brands:

  • Nostalgia provides a powerful means of driving an emotional response in consumers, building stronger connections between them and your brand.
  • The use of nostalgia is not exclusive to brands that have been around for a long time, even new brands can draw upon its power if they understand the cultural signifiers to employ.
  • But nostalgia is not value neutral, it always presents a fiction and this can be ideologically loaded. It is important to take the time to fully understand the connotations that the signifiers you are using will have within the contemporary context if you are to avoid accidentally communicating undesirable meanings.

Mark Lemon, Director

Nostalgia and Branding: Can looking backwards move us forwards?