How We Market the Past Shapes How We Live in the Future

Let’s time-travel.

The year is 2005. I awake to the sound of My Chemical Romance playing from my iPod alarm clock. I roll out of bed, straighten my hair, and put on all my Hot Topic favs before grabbing a Gogurt and walking to the bus stop. 

The truth is, I’m kind of miserable.

An awkward, insecure kid so deep in the closet that I don’t even realize it. This is the year I decide to start watching the news, and the only break from the Iraq War is…Hurricane Katrina. It’s not a great time!

Fast forward. The year is 2026. I sit on the couch next to my wife and dog. It’s the best part of the day: mindless TikTok scrolling time. I come across an ad for Taco Bell with…Sum 41 playing?

Suddenly, I’m transported. It’s 2005 again. Pop punk! Fast food with actually low prices! The possibility of youth! How I long to go back. I catch myself smiling. A Taco Bell ad made me smile, thinking about a time I actually didn’t enjoy living through! What the hell is going on?

Nostalgia: A Twinge in Your Heart, Far More Powerful Than Memory Alone

The human brain can do incredible things. Its capacity to forget is almost as incredible as its capacity to remember, and for good reason. Idealizing past memories can help humans cope with their own mortality, combat loneliness, and improve social bonds. 

It can also make us want to buy things. 

Mad Men fans reading this are probably familiar with Don Draper’s Kodak Carousel pitch. He begins by reflecting on some early career advice. A copywriter told him the most important idea in advertising is “new.” But there’s something even more powerful: nostalgia. 

“It’s delicate, but potent . . . the pain from an old wound. It’s a twinge in your heart, far more powerful than memory alone.” 

Don recounts this for a product that can facilitate nostalgia in an obvious way: scanning through old photos. But nostalgia can be evoked by almost any product or brand, even new ones, with the right trigger (like the sound of Sum 41). For a fleeting moment, the feelings those triggers create – far more powerful than memory alone – invite us to give in. Instead of worrying about the present or future, we’re prompted to indulge in reliving a simpler, easier past, even if it wasn’t actually simpler or easier. Who wouldn’t want to surround themselves with products that provide that mental escape? 

The Past Is So In Right Now

Nostalgia isn’t logical. It not only can make us yearn for times that might not actually have been happier, it can also make us yearn for times we didn’t even live through. For example, over a third of Gen Z are nostalgic for the 1990s. Most of them weren’t even born until the 2000s! How is that possible? 

Psychologists have a word for this: anemoia, or nostalgia for a time you never knew. This can happen at any age, but it’s especially prevalent among youth. When you’re too young to look back on a time you actually lived through, you have to borrow one. The ’90s are a sweet spot for Gen Z: early internet and cell phones feel familiar enough to be approachable (and provide a plethora of digital records to easily visualize the time). But the era itself is far enough away – and aestheticized enough online – to be easily romanticized. 

Plus, nostalgia is more prevalent during times of rapid change or disruption. Over the course of most Gen Zers’ lifetimes, humans have arguably experienced disruption more rapidly than at any other time in recorded history. The result: a years-long nostalgia marketing trend. (Seriously, I challenge anyone to find a year since 2020 without a credible article declaring that nostalgia marketing is the hottest thing around.) 

With AI and the ongoing erosion of US democracy, rapid, disruptive changes show no signs of slowing down. That ensures many more years of opportunity for nostalgia marketing and many more years of articles waxing poetic about what a great opportunity it is. 

These articles aren’t wrong, but something about them rubs me the wrong way. 

I have no illusions about what we do as marketers. Emotion is our most powerful tool, and nostalgia is one of the most powerful emotions. But dealing with emotions – especially when they’re born out of the nonstop anxieties of being alive today – isn’t just a marketing tactic. It’s a delicate responsibility we need to take seriously. 

Handling a Glass Case of Emotion

Let’s say your brand was founded in 1950. You’re best known for audio equipment. Your product has evolved a lot over the decades, but let’s face it: it’s hard to beat phones and Bluetooth headphones. You decide to go full nostalgia, launching a campaign that highlights your company’s roots. You’ll transport viewers back to 1950, when life moved more slowly. When Americans had more time to really sit and listen to music. 

It’s the perfect idea! Except… 

For many Americans, including those you’ve identified as major segments of your target audience, the year 1950 doesn’t bring to mind slow living. The ’50s were a time of profound systemic inequality. By trying to evoke a warm feeling for this time, you’re not just missing the mark; you’re destroying your audience’s trust in your brand.

Marketers aren’t expected to be historians (as much as this marketer with two history degrees would love that). And consumers don’t expect perfect historical accuracy in advertisements. But at minimum, we always need to be careful that campaigns won’t offend or alienate audiences, and that’s especially risky when dealing with the past. As is often the case, the best way to ensure success is by centering your audience, their needs, and their expectations from the very beginning. 

Regardless of your brand’s history, ask yourself: what is my target audience’s history, and what associations do they have with the past? What times do they long for, and what signals (colors, fonts, sounds, clothing, hairstyles, etc.) trigger that longing? What times do they really not want to recall, and what signals would trigger that recollection for them? From there, you can identify areas of connection between your brand or product and those triggers, both good and bad, so you know what to lean into and what to avoid.

The Moral Obligations of Marketing the Past 

Let me be clear: considering your audience isn’t just about marketing success. We have a moral obligation to be considerate here because, whether we like it or not, our work actually influences popular memory. 

As social psychologist Juho Hakokongas concluded, ads are so integral to culture that they don’t just reflect collective thinking, they shape it – including shaping the way we see the past. And how we see the past drives our present and future actions in our homes, in our communities, and in our government. 

That’s an incredible amount of power. Those of us who wield it shouldn’t just think about what will be most successful, but also about how we’re impacting the society we all share.  

Future Nostalgia 

Twenty years from now, I don’t know how our collective memory will view the time we’re living in now. Personally, I hope we’ll be looking back with clear eyes about all that we’ve been through. I believe that the lessons from COVID, rolled back progress across myriad social movements, attacks on US democracy from within, and the broader erosion of the post-WWII global order are too important to justify any other reaction. If that happens, trying to evoke fond memories of the 2020s simply for marketing success will be especially risky.

However, if I had to put money on it, I’d bet it’ll be very tempting to collectively process today’s traumas by adopting rose-colored glasses. If that happens, nostalgia will remain one of the most powerful tools in our box. 

For the good of us all, let’s make sure we wield it with extreme care.