A white Christmas. The family sitting around the fireplace. Stockings hung from the mantle with care. Just reading those words and seeing those images in your mind’s eye is enough to provoke powerful feelings. That’s true even if you’ve never really experienced those things. This is the time of year when many companies engage in “nostalgic marketing.” However, some ways to go about it are better than others.
According to this great article, the effectiveness of nostalgic marketing is “because the psychological response triggered by watching a deeply nostalgic video ends to be intense, since it is influenced by the viewer’s own positive emotions and memories.” Danny Star and the team have helped clients with exactly this, so that they had a kind of marketing that could appeal to their customers during this time of year (and any other).
What to Keep in Mind About Nostalgic Marketing
A great point that article makes: “tying your company to a period or place with happy personal associations to market goods and products doesn’t work if your video’s content fails to trigger that deeply nostalgic psychological response, though.”
So, this very well may be a case of “less is more.” Images of the snow, of the fireplace, of some gifts, of hands giving gifts to a smaller set of hands – that could be better at triggering that nostalgia effect than, say, a lavish production of several family members singing carols, drinking eggnog, acting excited when they open boxes containing sweaters, etc.
Additionally, you have to make sure that you’re showing something that can trigger those feelings of nostalgia, and not just saying: “Hey, this is nostalgic for you, right? Check it out.” We typically don’t judge articles by their headlines, but this recent one from the New York Times had a wonderful, true headline: “The Key to Marketing to Older People? Don’t Say ‘Old.”
Keeping this in mind when you develop your nostalgic marketing can help your company to tap into this powerful feeling when you’re making your videos, blogs, and other forms of content.
For more ways to grow your business, you can schedule a consultation with Danny Star at (213) 457-3250.
