The speed of nostalgia is increasing
- Yile Jin
- Sep 23, 2020
- 3 min read
Updated: Sep 25, 2020
Surprise! Our attention spans are shrinking and the nostalgia gap is getting smaller.
Pandemic – induced nostalgia
I did not expect 2020 to turn out the way it did when I was celebrating the new year on a rooftop bar in Shanghai. It was my last month of my exchange abroad, when I heard about a new virus somewhere in China. I was not fazed by it, nor did I think it would turn out to become a pandemic that would have the whole world on lockdown. Ever since the coronavirus quarantine and restrictions have begun, I’ve been feeling nostalgic for things that happened a mere few months ago. Scrolling through my photo gallery and thinking about how we used to go to parties with hundreds of people, kissing strangers, sitting in crammed busses with the person behind you literally breathing in your neck… although the latter will not be missed.
Nostalgia:” a feeling of pleasure and also slight sadness when you think about things that happened in the past “
The nostalgia gap is narrowing
The fact that nostalgia gap is narrowing, does not come as a surprise. It has been happening since the 60’s, as told by author Tom Shales from the Washington Post in his piece “Remember The Good Old '60s?” written in 1977:
“in the mid-60s people were nostalgic for the '30s - a three-decade gap. In the late '60s people were already nostalgic for the '50s. If this escalation continues, we may come full circle and by 1984 actually be nostalgic for 1984. The lag between vantage point and object of yearning has been narrowed by television, perpetual paean to the short attention span and dogged recycler of anything that might help fill empty acres of temporal space. "Now is not so very far from then," sings the Jimmy Thudpucker character on tonight's "Doonesbury Special" on NBC.”
The attention span that Shales described in his article, has become a lot shorter since the the rise of social media.
During lockdown, TikTok has become one of the most popular social media apps. You have probably heard of it, seen people do one of those quirky dances or even downloaded it yourself (unless you’ve been living under some kind of rock with no internet connection). This app allows users to create and watch a constant stream of 15-60 second videos that are based on your past watching behaviour. Every time you swipe - boom - a new video. With new stimuli, every few seconds, going at a rapid pace from one micro-length video to another.
A study in Nature Communications found that the constant stream of information can narrow our collective attention span overtime. This has resulted in the speed of nostalgia increasing. We find ourselves in the strange condition of time sped up — a shrinking of the future to look back on the past. The constant stream of new stimuli means that sources of future nostalgia are disseminated instantly, and as another fashion trend or tiktok dance is promoted and participated in, a previous one is made obsolete. Culture, like technology and consumer goods, is now run on an assumption of planned obsolescence.
The power of nostalgia marketing
Nostalgia marketing is the advertising equivalent of comfort food. In a time where everything is changing so fast and focused on the next big thing, nostalgia marketing can transport us back to a simpler place, where our current problems don’t matter. Using nostalgia as a tool for marketing encourages communities to reminisce why they like a specific brand, rather than pushing a service or product. It helps a brand to appear more authentic and down-to-earth to the audience, which can result in more revenue and visibility.
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Hi Kroft.m ! thank you for the comment :). A great example of a company that does it well is Nintendo; they made a commercial highlighting the memories of two Nintendo-loving brothers who grow apart, argue as teenagers, and then happily reunite as adults to play the new Nintendo Switch together! You can find the commercial on YouTube “Nintendo Ad - Two Brothers”. I think that nostalgia is a powerful tool to use as Gerald Zaltman, a Harvard Business School professor, said that 95% of our purchase decisions are driven by unconscious urges, the largest being emotion. What better way to do that than bringing back fun memories that one might have forgotten? It’s also a great way to establish viral campaigns…
Interesting, very fun to read! I'm curious, are there some examples of companies or brands who do this really well? Would you argue that this is something every marketer needs to make use of in their advertising/promotion campaigns?