Consumers are surrounded by movies, television shows, music, advertising, and shopping experiences that attempt to harken back to their younger days. And that is no accident.
Corporations stand to make a lot of money creating the experiences of childhood and then selling them back to consumers in the form of t-shirts, toys, and collectibles.
For insight on why the business of nostalgia is so effective, KYW Newsradio In Depth invited Dr. Dustin Kidd to join host Matt Leon for a recent episode, "Why nostalgia is a hot marketing commodity." Kidd is the chair of the sociology department and an associate professor of sociology at Temple University.
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The Super Bowl LVI halftime show -- featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige and Kendrick Lamar -- was focused towards people who were kids in the late ’80s and ’90s. And so some of the commercials that aired during the game seemed to tap into the experiences that defined that generation too.
Kidd says that the focus of commercial entertainment culture on tapping into the warm, fuzzy feelings of childhood is not a recent phenomenon though.
"When we were kids, there was ‘oldies’ radio, and that was for our parents to enjoy their nostalgia," Kidd said. "I don't know when ‘oldies’ was first introduced as a concept in radio, but the idea of nostalgia in popular culture has always been there."
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Kidd notes, there has been a shift in the way popular culture is produced. For example, streaming services, driven by the need to reach audiences with relatively inexpensive content, are drawn to a lot of idea recycling.
He cited “Bel Air,” Peacock's new dramatic take on the '90s sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” as an example.
Nostalgia, he says, helps define both individual audience members and, more broadly, communities.
“I think that it's about connecting with history, identity — getting a sense of who you are or creating a sense of who you are,” said Kidd. “Having things around your home or your office that tell a story about you.”
To be effective in playing into that, he says, corporations need to move nimbly among niches.
"The storytelling market at the moment is no longer a market of mass culture," Kidd continues, "where you tell one story and you get everyone to consume the same story. That was true of the ’80s and ’90s, when everybody was watching the same small number of TV channels and hearing the same songs on the radio. Now, it's very much about niche culture."
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And corporations can now delve into niche audiences and create more specific entertainment and products that they want to spend their money on.
“Geek culture has moved to the forefront,” he said, citing the 20-plus-year-old phenomenon of Harry Potter as an example. “I think it's tapping into geek culture, making geek culture cool, making it okay and exciting to invest in... And so you have a generation of folks who grew up with nerd culture being good culture, instead of something that would get you beaten up.”
To hear the complete conversation, listen below.
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