Nostalgia

In one of the famous Mad Men episodes Don Draper  tells us that in Greek nostalgia means pain from an old wound.  It is  a place "we ache to go again".   Nostalgia has become a frequent theme not just in marketing campaigns but in entertainment, products and music.  We are presented with remakes of movies, resurgence of toys and yes repeating ad campaigns...all of which are just copies of the original...lacking authenticity as well as originality.  To be nostalgic for something we must first feel it's absence...long for it wistfully.

So when Coke re-launched #shareacoke campaign this past summer, they were hoping to capture again what they had last summer....people searching through shelves to find the right name. That in opening a Coke you were not getting a beverage but a moment in time. A "place were you are loved".  A reminder of a friend or lover or lost parent.   It worked last year...so why not run it again? Add more names and hope that people are still holding on to that feeling of nostalgia.  Except we are so inundated with it, so overwhelmed with it in advertising that it's hard to feel it anymore.  We are all so busy tweeting out the picture of the can with our dog or ex spouses name on it that we don't feel the nostalgia.

Time for a new strategy...one that is forward looking, not backwards. One that speaks to where we are going, not where we have been.  One that tells us it's OK to drink that coke...not guilt us into buying it. How can we be nostalgic if everything just repeats. ..a remake of Point Break, Full House, more Ninja Turtles and My Little Ponies, another aging icon espousing the virtues of Detroit.  I'm not nostalgic for the old days and I don't want to think about my bro or best friend from high school when I drink a Coke.  I want to be won over, convinced of the virtues of a product.

The thing that made Don Draper's character so amazing to watch was that he was able to not just see what was, but what was coming.  As we fall head long into 2016 I find myself aching for the unknown.  For what is coming around the turn ahead.  And I am hopeful, as a marketer, an author and a teacher that this year it will be something new.  Something worth aching to return to once it has past.