Extreme Nostalgia Marketing

It all started with a loaf of bread. The 2008 Hovis Advert started an advertising revolution, telling the story of this brand in a very personal context. This year has seen M&S, Sainsbury's and Persil follow in it's footsteps. Even Virgin Atlantic has launched an advert crammed with vintage imagery for it's 25th birthday. Why is it that brands have decided that they are all going to celebrate a birthday this year? And why celebrate it by running a history of the brand? Are they all telling the truth? One article suggests that the M&S advert is to remind customers, "of things that were pioneered or invented by M&S, but are now taken for granted" but I think that's spurious.

It is well known that in hard times people, especially Brits, like to turn to what they know and love, and stay well away from risks and the unknown. So is this the reason that big brands are turning back the clocks? Nostalgia? Richard Bent, senior lecturer in retailing and marketing at Queen Margaret University, in an article for The Scotsman, confirms this theory saying that both Sainsbury's and M&S are trying to stimulate sales through a the appeal of nostalgia. This article goes further by introducing a second point, they are attempting to convince consumers to "put their trust in stores that have a long and reliable tradition of serving the public with quality goods from home and abroad", and trust in a brand is key to it's success in more difficult times.

Claire Beale, writing in The Independant, agrees with this view;

"Even though recent events in the financial sector have shown that longevity is no guarantee of stability, we are still more likely to see brands that have been around for a long time as reassuring and reliable. Their

sheer familiarity is comforting. After all, these are brands that served our parents and our grandparents, they're part of our family history. And they're on the side of the family."

And this is what is seen in all of these adverts, bar Virgin, is that the family is at the centre. This makes the viewer feel that their personal family is the priority of these brands, that the brand is doing it for them.

This great war between the Sainsbury's ad and the M&S ad, both released within weeks of each other, has been dubbed the avocado war, as both an avocado. Most people seem to view both of these as jumping on the nostalgia bandwagon that Hovis pioneered last year. Which brings me to the conclusion that they may not be as innovative as they like to think...

Utalkmarketing brings home a very good disadvantage with these adverts though, "There’s a danger with heritage adverts. Some can play so much on the past that the relevance of a brand today can be lost." A view from Marketing Magazine corresponds with this stating that

nostalgia is, "powerful, but delicate". This article points out that Persil, a brand once about pioneering the future, may have tarnished it's name by harping back to a time when mothers were tied to the kitchen sink and relinquished their freedom for that of their families. But surely the target market is formed of these mothers, who fought so hard for liberation from the kitchen, who would not harbour the warm, fuzzy glow of nostalgia about these times.

An article named "Persil not looking so white hot" from MediaWeek furthers this outlook, "a browse on Internet forums suggests some mothers find the ad condescending". A quick search on Internet forums for parents shows just how much Persil have missed the mark with this one with comments on Mumsnet ranging from the harmless, "'someone who uses Persil' how is it possible to define a Mum as someone who uses their own brand, what about the Ladies with children who use Fairy, what are they if not Mums?" to the clearly outraged,

"Perhaps that's it - perhaps she thinks "sod the lot of you, do your own bloody washing, I'm off to follow my dream and play cricket for England in Barbados as I should have done years ago, before I met and married your father and became the drudge you now see before you".

Yes, now that would make me buy Persil!"

So why does the use of nostalgia in advertising work? When I explored nostalgia for my class blog I came across many definitions of nostalgia, one of which came from a course textbook; "Consumer Behavior, Solomon et al. defines Nostalgia as a bitter sweet emotion when the past is viewed with sadness and longing." But this is not the type that is currently being exploited, there may be an element of "bittersweet" but sadness is not the key here. To understand how nostalgia is used, it is, firstly, important to understand how it works. "Historical and Personal Nostalgia in Advertising Text" by Barbara Stern (1992), describes the process;

"Social forecasters (Louv 1985; Naisbitt 1982), literary critics (Doane and Hodges 1987), and marketing and advertising researchers (Havlena and Holak 1991; Holak and Havlena 1992; Wallendorf and Arnould 1992; Holbrook and Schindler 1991; Stern 1992) have commented on the increasing visibility of nostalgia themes in the past two decades. These themes seek to tap into consumers' "vast structure of recollection" by reviving promotions, products, and packages associated with the past. Advertisers claim that the use of nostalgia is a way to capitalize on the "gift" of brand equity possessed by recycled advertising (Winters 1990). In this view, even though consumers can not literally return to the past, they, can, nevertheless, recreate it through nostalgic consumption activities." Don Drapper, Mad Men, says that nostalgia is a twinge of pain, an aching to go back to a certain place.

As Claire Gaunt illustrates in "Future vs Nostalgia", "It’s understandable that, at a time when it feels as though the foundations of the society we’ve built for ourselves are collapsing, looking back to when bank managers at least seemed like honest brokers is an attractive form of escapism." Gaunt also reaches the heart of the issues, "Where contemporary nostalgia works is where it’s saying, reflecting or playing on something modern". The Persil advert says nothing new, contemporary or innovative. It is simply a montage of old adverts, saying the same thing they have always said, which appears condescending in today's society.

The Sainsbury's advert certainly has nothing new to add. M&S focuses slightly more on the aspects that effect our life today. But what is really missing from these adverts is what they are going to offer in the future. Consumers are looking for brands that are future-proof, and are doing this by looking at the longest standing, comfort brands, but as we have seen this is not a good measure. What brands need to do now is look to the future and assure their market that they will be around for years to come.

For another superb blog on, roughly, the above topic, follow this link to the ever funny PRvert's blog.