The Power of Nostalgia.

VOL. 0058 – FLORIDA, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2024

Juan F. Arjona Harry

President & CEO Strategee   

One of the most powerful communication techniques when generating emotionality toward a brand and thus contribute to the construction of Equity, is the appeal to the power of nostalgia.

This works and it works very well as a triggering mechanism of positive emotionality for all brands and today has become a successful strategy for various brands, to the point of becoming a generator of special editions and commemorative editions of the product.

What is the strategy?

The Strategy consists of presenting the brand, products linked to the brand and sometimes the containers or packaging of the brand, with the Trade Dress that was once used in the past.

Usually appeals to the presentation that the brand had in some of their packages.

This achieves the generation of a high positive emotionality impact for the brand, because consumers found moments of their lives that are remembered always with great affection, finding that the brand was there at the time accompanying them creating positive emotionality derived from the memories of old times.

The nostalgia will always bring great and positive emotional moments evocative of past times that were beautiful and sweet.

The transfer of this positive emotional evocation, arises from the time lived and gives the brand that emotionality, precisely because it was the brand that was in charge of bringing it into the present.

We'll see below some of the most important points in the use of this strategy and also some elements that make implementation successful:

1. For the strategy to generate high impact, the brand should be 10 years old.
   

2. The fewer years of the brand, the more the context elements needed to implement nostalgia.
   

3. Can be used only with alive and competitive brands, not brands that are going through a complex situation or loss of competitive position.
   

4. Even when there are generations who have not experienced the time evoked by the brand, these also generate positive emotionality result of evocation.
   

5. It should be used only for a short period of time, since it is part of the production of emotional effect, which is presented as a collection or special edition.
   

6. Sometimes requires strong support in mass media communication, especially when it is tied to promotions that require collecting packaging or make redemptions.
   

7. A powerful strategy is to use them as special editions, but you can configure future series re-launched on the market with a theme of the time, but with different themes. The use of nostalgia gives much brightness to brands, enabling them to gain equity in the generations that lived the moment and even in the new generations.