Ever feel like social media used to be somehow better?
In that case, you’re already familiar with the power of nostalgia to influence how we feel about products and services.
In this article, we’ll explain what nostalgia in marketing is all about and why it’s so effective. Plus we’ll share real-world examples of brands using nostalgia in their social media marketing strategies.
Let’s get into it…
What Is Nostalgia Marketing?
Nostalgia marketing is about encouraging audiences to form an emotional connection with your product, service, or brand by relating them to positive sentiments from their past. The types of things that make them feel warm, fuzzy, and safe.
Done right, nostalgia marketing can be a powerful tool for building brand awareness and recall, capturing earned media, and persuading people to buy.
Why Does Nostalgia Marketing Work?
Psychologists have found that our brain’s emotional and reward centers can be triggered by meaningful memories, like a piece of music that relates to a positive past experience or a cherished place.
In a world that can often feel like a pretty scary place, it’s easy to see why social media users seek out and engage with this sort of content. Particularly given that 77% of Americans agree that nostalgic memories provide a source of comfort during uncertain or difficult times.
So who, exactly, is most influenced by nostalgia-tinged marketing?
Perhaps surprisingly, it’s especially effective for targeting younger audiences. Consumer research company GWI found that 15% of Gen Z and 14% of Millennials prefer thinking about the past rather than the future, with interest tailing off among older age groups. Similarly, 50% of Gen Z and 47% of Millennials feel nostalgia toward certain types of media.
Across all age demographics, consumers are most likely to be nostalgic about the decade of their childhood or young adulthood — the noughties for Gen Z, the 90s for Millennials, the 80s for Gen X, and the 70s for Baby Boomers.
Yet 37% of Gen Z express nostalgic feelings about the 1990s — despite most of them not having been born then.
This taps into a key element of nostalgia marketing: it’s less about giving a realistic portrayal of life in the past, and more about tapping into positive emotions associated with previous times.
After all, you’re a marketer, not a documentarian.
6 Killer Examples of Nostalgia in Social Media Marketing
Okay, so we know what nostalgia marketing is, and we know why it works.
Now, let’s dive into some real-life examples of nostalgia marketing on social media and examine what they can teach us for our own campaigns…
1. Oh Polly Launches Co-Branding Campaign With Iconic Doll Brand
Oh Polly is a women’s fashion brand predominantly targeting Gen Z.
As we’ve already seen, consumers in that age bracket are most likely to feel nostalgic for the 2000s, so it made perfect sense for Oh Polly to team up with Bratz — a fashion doll line that first hit the market in 2001.
This collaboration is a classic example of co-branding in action. Oh Polly teased the new collection a week before the launch…
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…while Bratz posted on the actual drop date:
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💡 Key learning: Co-branding is an easy way to tap into new, complementary audiences. Bratz has a combined 5+ million followers across Instagram and TikTok — and chances are, not all of them were already big fans of Oh Polly.
2. Crocs Reinvents Itself Through Nostalgia
If you’re old enough to remember when Crocs first came out way back in 2002, you might recall that they were initially positioned as a boat shoe thanks to their comfort and waterproof materials.
At the time, pretty much everyone agreed they were hideous, and before too long we all sort of lost interest.
Then something remarkable happened — about two decades after they first hit the market, Crocs got cool. Take a look at how search activity around the term “Crocs” spiked in early 2020, and how it’s remained sky-high ever since:
Nostalgia has played a key role in the footwear brand’s revival.
Their social media marketing regularly references iconic moments in pop culture history, like this influencer campaign with streamer and YouTuber Valkyrae that takes inspiration from a certain vampire movie franchise:
@crocs A love so addicting, you just can’t stop. Coming soon 👀 @Valkyrae #croctok
This is a smart strategy, given that movies are the #1 media type for triggering nostalgia, ahead of music, TV shows, and photographs:
💡 Key learning: Given that nostalgic content is particularly popular among younger consumers, consider leveraging nostalgia in your social media campaigns when you’re trying to reach, engage, and convert Gen Z and Millennial audiences.
3. Geico Recycles Past Campaigns
Think nostalgia marketing is only relevant to fashion brands?
Think again. In our next example, insurance company Geico tapped into two trends — nostalgia and Halloween — by reminding social media followers about one of its most popular past campaigns:
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There are a couple big benefits to this approach.
For one thing, it’s a massive time-saver. All they had to do was post a video they created a decade ago and come up with a new caption, which definitely beats having to think up a whole new campaign.
But this tactic wasn’t born out of pure laziness, with GWI’s research revealing that one in five consumers feel nostalgia for old advertisements. So by resharing this old ad, Geico was able to build more of a positive connection with audiences who remember it from the first time around.
(Plus, let’s be honest, it’s a fun ad — so why not run it again?)
💡 Key learning: Don’t worry if you haven’t got Geico-level brand awareness, because you can still recycle your most popular campaigns from years gone by. Long-term fans will appreciate it, and those who weren’t following you at the time get to enjoy their first look.
4. ColourPop Cosmetics Taps Into Stranger Things Nostalgia
Stranger Things is a dream for any marketer trying to leverage the benefits of nostalgia on social media.
It’s a double-win, allowing brands to engage audiences who remember when it first came out in 2016, while also targeting consumers who feel nostalgic for the show’s iconic 1980s setting and aesthetic.
So by teaming up with Stranger Things for a product launch, cosmetics brand ColourPop effectively tapped into two “flavors” of nostalgia in a single campaign:
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💡 Key learning: Don’t have the budget for a Stranger Things collab? No problem. The real learning here is that nostalgia can come from unexpected places. Remember, Stranger Things season one came out in 2016. So if you have an audience that skews younger, the late-teens could be fertile ground for nostalgic inspiration.
5. Bobby Jack Targets Emo Fans
Inevitably, Gen Z’s fixation with all things noughties has sparked a resurgence in one of the era’s defining music scenes, emo. Search interest in emo took off in late 2020, likely driven by younger audiences yearning for a time when none of us had ever heard the word “coronavirus” before:
This has prompted plenty of brands to launch emo-themed products or entire collections, just like clothing brand Bobby Jack did here:
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Whether or not you think Panic! At The Disco is really an emo band, Bobby Jack did a great job at capturing the feeling of emo with this campaign, from the black and pink nail polish to the studded bracelet to the tagline “it’s not a phase.”
💡 Key learning: You can leverage nostalgia around music scenes without having to launch an entire dubstep or cyberpunk collection — it’s simply a case of using nostalgic music and aesthetics in your Instagram Reels, Stories, and TikToks.
6. Lisa Frank Leans Into Nostalgia for Adults
Beauty and accessories brand Lisa Frank is yet another company to enjoy a nostalgia-fueled resurgence in recent years, as demonstrated by this search interest graph from Google Trends:
Lisa Frank was a fixture of many Millennial childhoods, with the brand’s brightly colored pajamas, homework planners, and stationery selling big numbers in the 1990s and 2000s.
Today, Lisa Frank leans into the fact that it’s still targeting the same people — it’s just that their customers have gotten older:
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As you can see from the comments, Millennial customers still feel extremely attached to the brand — to the extent that some just want Lisa Frank to re-release the exact same products they used and loved as a kid.
💡 Key learning: At some point, every brand has to decide if it’s going to stick with targeting a specific age group (say, 18 to 24-year-olds) or keep reaching out to those same customers as they grow older. There’s no right or wrong approach — it’s about doing what makes sense for you and your audience.
5 Best Practices for Nostalgia in Social Media Marketing
Let’s wrap things up with some key pointers for successful nostalgia marketing on social media:
- Start with your audience: Different nostalgic triggers resonate with different audiences. So don’t just jump on the latest nostalgia trend — ask yourself whether it’ll engage your customers.
- Take a multimedia approach: Images, videos, and sounds can all provoke nostalgic feelings, so be sure to experiment with all of them in your campaigns.
- Bring something new to the table: Remember, nostalgia isn’t about accurately representing the past. It’s about tapping into a fictionalized version of it, with your brand and products at the center.
- Leverage cultural milestones: It often makes sense to launch campaigns around key pop culture dates, like the 10th anniversary of an album or movie.
- Work with nostalgia-inducing brands: Co-branding collaborations are an effective way to reach new audiences. And it can work even better if the brand you’re teaming up with sparks feelings of nostalgia in your audience.
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Featured image by Freepik.
