"Nostalgia is like stepping in a time machine, and that's a trip that will only be meaningful to the people who experienced it during the first go around," said Maddie McDowell, creative director at 72andSunny. "You're boxing yourself out of new growth audiences. What I find more successful is the 'newstalgia' approach which taps into the familiarity and timelessness of what's loved about your brand, but finds a way to reinvent or reinterpret it to meet the cultural moment."
Brands like See's Candies and Barbie are examples of brands that have challenged McDowell to 'walk that delicate line' of past reference and new approach.
If marketers continually lean on the past without building for the future, there won't be anything new to reference five, ten, or fifteen years from now. Finding a fresh spin on a past reference where there's still a new idea at play is key to avoiding the trap of nostalgia and getting a brand stuck in the past.
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