Skip to main content

The Selling Power of Nostalgia

Nostalgia is a common house guest this time of year. We pull out boxes of ornaments wrapped in mildewed tissue and remember the stories that accompany each as we hang them on tree branches, some fake, some real, and listen to Christmas carols or sip hot chocolate. We anticipate the two biggest eating holidays of the year, thinking about all of our favorites that mom or grandma will make and that we only get to indulge on an annual basis. Green bean casserole and sweet potatoes with little marshmallows, pecan pie and eggnog are just a few of the small splurges we save for this heady time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.
Despite new technology and even newer sensibilities that might eschew nostalgia and tradition, retailers bank on our adherence to these annual rituals. National and local stores make a pretty hefty bet at the start of their fiscal year that a majority of their money will be made in these four to six weeks and then they spend inordinate amounts of advertising dollars making sure we spend, spend, spend. And what’s their biggest selling point?
 Nostalgia.
Preserve old memories, make new ones, add a new ingredient to your family recipe – these messages assail us this time of year, telling us why we need another version of the ornament we cherish, in spite of the fact that the new, shiny one just unwrapped from its factory plastic carries no memories with it.
But this ability to cash in on our sense of nostalgia extends far beyond the retail space. The opening this past weekend of The Muppets drives home exactly how much stock we place in nostalgia. Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear are relics of a simpler time, a less cynical version of America when we looked to entertainment to entertain with a nod and a wink, not a slap and a curse word. There was a time when a cream pie in the face or a water squirting boutineer was high comedy. Speculation abounded before the movie’s release if the Muppets could be updated for today’s modern sensibility while still maintaining the kid-friendly, family-friendly feel of its original. New Flash: If it weren’t possible to update humor to appeal to both kids and adults through a primarily kid-focused medium, Pixar would be in Chapter 11.
It would have been a huge win for nostalgia, tradition, the Muppets and Jason Segel if the movie had won the box office on opening weekend. Unfortunately, there are some sparkly vampires who beat them to the multiplex and tween girls with enough disposable income to see Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One a dozen of times in a two day span. Grossing $42 million in its opening weekend is a respectable showing for a movie with Muppets, Moopets and maniacal laughs, but maybe where they’ve really won the race is the reviews.
RottenTomatoes.com has The Muppets at 98% while Breaking Dawn is only tracking at 26%. Christopher Orr, movie critic for The Atlantic, sums it up this way: “The chorus of one of the songs declares, ‘I’ve got everything that I need, right in front of me.’ For 120 minutes, that's precisely how I felt.” Glowing might be an understatement.
It’s nostalgia that’s keeping those felt beauties relevant, folks, not a hip soundtrack or sparkling social commentary (although any fan of the Muppets will tell you they excel at the latter). We’ve seen this nostalgia phenomenon keep brands in the limelight for years. Everything from Star Wars to Star Trek to Rainbow Brite has benefited from a strong nostalgic reaction that eventually pays off with a franchise resurgence.
And that’s why marketers and advertisers will continue to exploit that happy place in our heart where some of our fondest memories live. Because nostalgia sells. Anyone who tells you differently is obviously unsentimental and probably has a heart made of coal.
Or, they’re too young to know what nostalgia means. In which case, give them a few years and then see how they react to Dora, iCarly and the Wizards of Waverly Place.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Media Revolution Will Be Digitized

Hello, my name is Megan and I am addicted to media.  There, I said it. I am and have been addicted to media for quite some time. I amassed mountains of books in my youth, going so far as to create my own card catalog to keep track of them (for those of you younger than 25, ask your older colleagues what that means). In second grade, I pretended to edit a magazine, recruiting an editorial board and holding "story" meetings. Our magazines were actually blank pages full of scribbles stapled into manilla folders, but hey, we were generating some good content. When I got older, I started to appreciate other types of media, namely newspaper. There was always a newspaper in our house on the weekends when I was growing up, I was used to the smudgy fingers and ad circulars, the horoscopes and the crosswords, and especially the comics. During my "Garfield" phase I cut out every strip that was in the paper and saved them. Yup, every one. In college, I was lucky en...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Only Thing Worse Than Being Blind Is Having Sight But No Vision

Helen Keller was made of strength and perseverance. I remember first reading “The Miracle Worker” in high school and being completely taken by not only Annie Sullivan’s commitment to helping Helen, but also Helen’s true isolation until the woman came into her life. The quote, "The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision,” could be interpreted multiple ways. For me, vision is what drives us forward. It’s a form of curiosity, imagination, and creativity. If you don’t have any vision or you simply choose not to use it, you’ll never expand beyond your current life experience.  Albert Einstein, another hero of mine, has a few quotes along these same lines. The two that I refer to the most often are: “Imagination is more important than knowledge;” and “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination.” What would have happened if Einstein had simply chosen not to push himself? What would have happened if Helen Keller simply learned ho...
Post a Comment
Read more

The difference between innovation and inaction: A Tale of Two Companies

I have always been proud of my small hometown in upstate New York. I grew up on the shores of Lake Ontario and in the shadow of a moderately-sized, but fairly important city for business, Rochester. Making their home in the Rochester area are three large corporations: Xerox, Bausch & Lomb and Kodak. For decades, these three companies have not only stimulated Western New York's economy, but have been considered pioneers in their respective fields. Then, this week, there's rumblings that Kodak may have to declare bankruptcy. Yikes. The fact that this announcement comes the same week as Steve Jobs' death is eerily coincidental in my mind. Today, we're mourning the passing of one of America's truly great innovators, while one of America's truly great innovative companies seems on the verge of collapse. While Jobs was able to grow and evolve his company, and in the process create markets for MP3s, smartphones and tablet technology, Kodak stagnated. Based ...
Post a Comment
Read more