Marketing Briefing: Why nostalgia marketing can be a crutch

Nostalgia marketing isn’t a new trend. Reboots, retreads and riffs on the past are all too common, appearing everywhere from the big screen (a reboot of Alien and sequels to Beetlejuice and Twister are currently in theaters) to the small screen (Pepsi recently recreated its iconic “Gladiator” spot this time with athletes instead of pop stars; the VMA’s red carpet was littered with looks that referenced past stars’ iconic garb, to name a few) so often that it’s hard to keep up.  

No small amount of the dominant cultural conversation looks back to a time that once was – or, let’s be real, probably never was but it’s easy to idolize the past – so it makes sense that brands would do it too.

This is a member-exclusive article from Digiday. Continue reading it on digiday.com and subscribe to continue reading content like this.