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Use the force: tap into nostalgia

February 10th 2011

Jasper Ditton

Head of Digital at Marketecture, helping clients to achieve their business and marketing objectives using digital marketing channels. Starting as a developer, Jasper moved to strategic and operational client services roles 5 years ago and has worked with some of the UK's largest brands and a huge variety of public sector, B2B and B2C clients.

If there are any Super Bowl fans out there, you may have seen "The Force", a Star Wars themed advert for Volkswagen's new Passat 2012:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R55e-uHQna0

Played as an ad spot during one of the most watched TV events of the world - the Super Bowl was watched by a TV audience of 111 million this year - it has already become a huge success on the internet with over 25M views on YouTube. The beauty of the ad is that it really isn’t an advert for a car at all, but more about the imagination of a child playing at being Darth Vader.

But why is it successful?

A key part of its success is tapping into people's nostalga: the original Star Wars episode was released in 1977, 34 years ago, when many of the 30-50 year olds today in the target market for a new Passat would have been doing exactly what the child is doing in the advert - pretending to be characters from the film.

Using nostalgia badly...

So, if the VW ad is an example of good use of nostalgia, what about a bad example? Well, the "Flyfishing by J.R.Hartley" advert for The Yellow Pages (first aired in 1983) was hugely memorable and has become a cultural reference used universally by comedians, writers and anybody really. Featuring an old man looking for a book he wrote, the ad is heart warming and memorable: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv1VQ7uSC-s

Looking to tap into this nostalgia, Yell.com - the current evolution of The Yellow Pages - has remade the advert in a way that is tired and shows a lack of originality, rather than evoking a nostagic pang:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8YDZKTvWMw

So, our top tips for using nostalgia in your campaign:

  • If tying in a culture reference (theme, film, art), make sure it runs central to campaign - and if possible ties in with your brand's values - to avoid it feeling like "borrowed equity"
  • Don't just rehash an old campaign or concept
  • Aim for creative that takes the audience back in time