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Nostalgia
ads work, but why?
by
Nicholas K. Geranios
Associated Press
SPOKANE, Wash. - Does that advertisement showing "mom"
making Chex mix in the 1960s make you cry?
Does the recent Coke ad showing people again wanting to teach
the world to sing make you long for the Age of Aquarius?
When you see pictures of old muscle cars, do you want to buy
a new Dodge Challenger?
When Leonard Nimoy finally spreads his fingers in the Vulcan
salute, are you ready to buy Aleve? |
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Those
are all examples of nostalgia advertising, a successful but little
studied branch of marketing.
Two researchers at Washington State University - Darrel Muehling
and David Sprott - are studying why nostalgia ads work. They contend
that as the baby boomers age into their 60s, such ads are likely
to become more common.
"Right now, the major television networks tell you that those
between 18 and 49 years of age are the only ones who count,"
Muehling, chair of the marketing department at WSU, said. "But
that's an assumption that needs to be revisited."
Since older people have much more life experience than the young,
"you logically assume that you will see an even more pronounced
effect with nostalgia based advertising when dealing with an older
population," Muehling said.
Muehling has also studied the long term effectiveness of negative
versus positive ads, and the influence of ads on people who aren't
paying much attention. He was recently honored by the American Academy
of Advertising for a lifetime of work.
A nostalgia ad is any ad that evokes a bittersweet recall of the
past, Sprott said. It can recall an earlier time in which a person
was alive, or even a time before they were born.
But in general, life experiences that people have in their 20s-and
the music, cars and clothes that accompanied those experiences-form
the basis for nostalgic feelings.
"Stuff we experience right out of college structures the general
preferences for the rest of our lives," Sprott said.
Nostalgia ads are particularly popular during the Christmas season,
when the media is filled with ads showing people rushing home for
the holidays, they said.
Bill Northrop of miller whiterunkle, Spokane's largest advertising
agency, agreed that nostalgia works well for some products. The
agency used vintage photos and other old imagery in creating ads
for Henry Weinhard's Private Reserve beer, he said.
"Nostalgia works when you have a great brand that truly has
history," Northrop, executive director of the agency, said.
In a recent study, Muehling and Sprott explored a number of assumptions
about nostalgia ads. They wanted to know if such ads were truly
effective in prompting "nostalgic reflections" among consumers;
whether such thoughts were generally positive; and whether they
prompt more favorable opinions of products than ads lacking the
nostalgia factor.
They took a group of 159 WSU students and showed them two nearly
identical appearing print advertisements. One ad focused on the
good old days, the other focused on seizing the possibilities of
the present.
Their survey found that people who were shown the nostalgic ad tended
to exhibit more favorable attitudes toward the advertised brand
than those who did not.
The research also raised issues that suggest nostalgic reactions
can be more complex than advertisers might expect. They found when
people became nostalgic for their own past, the feelings were often
bittersweet.
"The reason it is bittersweet is that the memory is positive
in most cases, but we really cannot return to that time," Sprott
said. "That's where the sadness comes in."
"You can't return to the high school prom, only experience
it vicariously," he said.
Nostalgia tends to be affective rather than cognitive, meaning it
is feelings based rather than thought based, they said.
There's no exact count of how many ads use nostalgia, but a study
from 1991 that looked at 1,000 commercials on the three major networks
found that about 10 percent of the ads evoked nostalgia. They said
that percentage is likely still fairly accurate.
One issue they are planning to explore soon is whether ads that
use nostalgic cues to prompt a person's memories tend to make them
forget the product being sold.
A person crying at the notion of a multigenerational family gathering
may not notice the pitch for a better camera, they said.
In their study, Sprott said, there were few instances in which a
direct link was established between personalized nostalgic thoughts
and the product promoted in the advertisement.
"It may be that thoughts that are too personally involving
become a distraction and tend to interfere with product related
thoughts," he said. |
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