Retro marketing is about using nostalgia as a marketing instrument to make a product appeal to a target market. Especially for brands that have a heritage or served as milestones of a particular generation, tribe or season, retro marketing involves leveraging on that heritage or nostalgia for a company’s past products in promoting the modern brand. Lots of organisations are falling back into retro marketing as a strategy to increase sales and they are raking in profits. It can involve bringing back the old product (JIK), or pimping an old model of the product (Volkswagen, Pepsi). Most of them even recall previous advertising campaigns to blast past the competition in celebrating anniversaries (STAR larger beer, OMO)
It is generally of two types;
1. A genuine re-issue or replica of an original product from the past (Mountain Dew, Classic Coke)
2. Using a modern product that adopts retro styling to make it look and feel different from similar products (Facebook)
Company history and brand heritage is important in any retro campaign. Many companies are keen to stress their history and expertise over a long period. This is usually gn that communicates ‘we’ve been doing this a long time, so you can trust us’. The appeal can either be real or imagined past that conjures up images of a lost age.
Retro marketing can also be in developing campaigns or changing the product itself, to make it look old fashioned.
The retro marketing model leans heavily on a psychology and science of human behaviour that proposes that as we grow older we yearn for ” remarkable positive memories we experienced from the past”. These yearnings of an idealised past provides an opportunity for marketers to provide nostalgic cues (images, songs and messages) that make us more receptive to messages that urges us to take a ‘dose’ from the past.
As these method continues to gain acceptance and elicit reactions, more brands will be joining up in the retromarketing campaign
OMO, Star Larger beer, JIK… which one else can you identify?
