When nurturing nostalgia becomes creative cowardice
Nick Lloyd, Creative Director at MNSTR (part of Project Worldwide), thinks that looking at culture through the rearview mirror can be comforting but potentially calamitous for brands, which need to have an eye on the future.
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There was a time when culture arrived in chapters. The Clash gave frustration a voice. A Guy Called Gerald and the Haçienda, gave people somewhere to lose themselves. Wiley, Kano and Skepta made grime impossible to ignore, even when much of Britain was doing its best not to listen.
These scenes grew out of real places and real frustrations. People worked out what they meant as they went along. Nobody turned up with a brand book, a launch strategy and a five-year plan for cultural domination.
It’s far easier to pull out a familiar reference, stick it in a deck and watch everyone around the table nod.
That time to develop is harder to find now. Ideas can go global before their creators have figured out what they're actually making. For brands, it means taking a chance on something unfinished. It’s far easier to pull out a familiar reference, stick it in a deck and watch everyone around the table nod. Which might explain why so much creative work has its eyes firmly on the rear-view mirror.
Above: A lot of creative ideas are relying on culture's rearview mirror for ideas and concepts.
The past feels reassuring
Vintage football shirts have become fashion statements. Twenty-year-old films return with fresh faces and the same plots. Even the humble digital camera has made a comeback - blurry photos and all. Perhaps the past feels so attractive because the future feels increasingly difficult to imagine.
That's the trap for brands: confusing the aesthetic with the culture underneath.
A generation has grown up bouncing from one crisis to the next. Buying a home feels like science fiction; buying groceries is becoming a minor financial event. Familiar music, objects and memories offer comfort. Put on an old track and, for three minutes, you're back in a version of life that felt a bit more open-ended.
Culture has lost its waiting time
The internet has made every era available at once. You can discover Gang of Four over breakfast and be wearing a grey suit jacket by lunch. Brilliant access, but it's also collapsed the gap between discovering something and seeing the rest of the world catch up.
You can wear the clothes without understanding what made them matter. That's the trap for brands: confusing the aesthetic with the culture underneath. You can nail every reference, right down to the typeface, and still give people absolutely no reason to care.
Above: The past, including vintage football shirts, which have become fashion statements, feels so attractive because the future feels increasingly difficult to imagine.
What gets lost along the way
Subcultures used to have somewhere to grow. People could experiment and get things wrong before the wider world took notice. Online communities can create genuine belonging, particularly for people who don't find it locally. But the feed has a short attention span. There's always another obsession waiting for its turn.
Those older scenes belonged to the people building them long before they belonged to everyone else. Of course, nostalgia edits out the rubbish bits. Looking back, the movements that survived seem far more coherent than they probably felt at the time.
Brands should recognise that nostalgia is increasingly shallow water, and an awful lot of people are paddling in it.
The irony is that none of those movements knew they would last. The people involved were responding to the world around them and finding their people, not wondering how the work will look in a future mood board or archive exhibition.
We can neatly package that history, slap a familiar soundtrack on it and sell it back to the people who remember. It might get a reaction, but it rarely carries the same weight. Brands should recognise that nostalgia is increasingly shallow water, and an awful lot of people are paddling in it.
Above: As a brand, LEGO has utilised nostalgia well.
Making something people might miss
Nostalgia is seductive because it delivers an instant emotional shortcut. But loving an old track doesn't mean you'll love the brand licensing it. If the same idea could sell trainers, insurance or a new phone, what are we really saying? Familiarity gets more interesting when it invites people to do something, not just remember something.
LEGO offers a useful example. The nostalgia brings adults back, but the magic is still in building. Every generation makes its own memories rather than simply borrowing someone else's. There's somewhere for the relationship to go after that first warm hit of recognition.
If everything is decided in the first creative brief, you've probably killed off half the interesting possibilities.
Brands can afford to give new ideas that same space subcultures had; back a recurring event, create somewhere for people to gather, and let a community shape what happens next. That means loosening the grip a little. If everything is decided in the first creative brief, you've probably killed off half the interesting possibilities.
When every idea needs proof it'll work before it exists, nostalgia has a head start. An unfamiliar idea has no equivalent history, so it can struggle to get through the same approval process. That's where nostalgia becomes creative cowardice: when familiarity starts deciding which ideas deserve a chance.
If we want to make things people will miss in twenty years, we have to give today's ideas a chance to become tomorrow's memories. Someone has to be willing to back the unknown.
