Use Nostalgia To Target Young Consumers

It may seem strange to think that young consumers are affected by nostalgia, but a recent initiative by Reddit demonstrated that nostalgia is in fact very relevant for younger generations. The initiative consisted of posting a topic named “What Thing Just Ain’t The Same Anymore” and it attracted a veritable deluge of nostalgic throwbacks.

According to speaker and blogger Ryan Jenkins, whose research focuses on the millennial generation, in the future nostalgia will have an even greater influence over those now in their 20’s. As they get older, he explained, they will come to value their past even more, with 43% preferring to buy brands that they have known since their childhood.

The media and entertainment industry is already taking advantage of this phenomenon, with events like 90’s pop-band revival tours, or online content publications such as Buzzfeed and Cracked often utilising nostalgic references to Friends or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example.

The growing popularity of nostalgic throwbacks seems to be a clear trend and brands would be smart not to ignore it, Voxburner reports, especially since it doesn’t require much funding or investment in resources. There are questions surrounding if the nostalgic experiences of millennials is any different to that experienced by generation X, with two authors of a book on the subject (“X vs Y: A Culture War, a Love Story”) determining that nostalgia seems to be more intense today than for previous generations, most probably because of the presence of the Internet, which is connecting the world and enhancing the idea of one large world-wide community.