One of the most complicated things to do when planning a marketing strategy is to create a genuine connection with our target audience. In this way, brands try their best to research the needs of the market and connect with their customers on a “human level.”
So, how can we make a connection with our audience and ensure it lasts? In this post we will cover some ways that we can develop these emotional bonds with our customers using nostalgia.
What is Emotional Marketing?
The main aim of emotional marketing is to generate feelings and emotions in our customers by presenting a certain predisposition related to our product or brand. A high percentage of our decisions are because of our subconscious, so learning how to activate this part of our brain using positive emotions will attract more customers.
In short, this type of marketing aims to appeal to emotions in order to establish a link with our consumers. So, what are the main emotions that we can use to establish a connection with our clients? Due to their great impact, the most susceptible feelings are happiness, nostalgia, sadness and fear amongst others.
Advantages of Emotional Marketing
Both positive and negative emotions have a great effect on the purchasing decisions of our consumers and can even cause the sales of certain products to skyrocket. Establishing this valuable type of connection between a brand and their customers presents a variety of different advantages, these include:
- Added Value to the Brand: Thanks to emotional marketing, consumers don’t only associate a brand with a certain product or its features, but also with emotions and experiences that they developed during the process.
- Customer Loyalty: Creating long lasting relationships with their customers is one of the main objectives of all brands.Creating this type of connection increases the likelihood of engagement between business and customer.
- Differentiation: As we mentioned before, the market is highly competitive so it’s very important to set yourself apart from the rest of the market. If you can get your customers to associate your brand with a particular emotion or feeling, it will create a unique connection that will give you an edge over the competition.
Nostalgia as a key Emotion
As we mentioned before, nostalgia is one of the most important emotions to think about when you are planning your marketing strategy. Feelings of nostalgia are most common at Christmas as we associate this time of year with certain triggers like love, family and memories. At christmas time, businesses develop different strategies and marketing plans to incentivise their customer base, to create loyalty amongst their consumers or to increase their visibility in the market.
But what exactly is nostalgia? Broadly speaking, nostalgia tries to remind us of moments from the past that have had an impact on our lives. For example: youth, a period of life we associate with innocence, a lack of responsibilities and enjoying the moment. Further to referencing the past, nostalgia can also be associated with people, either those who are no longer with us or those who we don’t see as often as we would like to.
At first glance, you may think that this emotion evokes negative feelings and emotions, though in reality it is quite the opposite. Experimenting with nostalgia puts us in a good mood, it helps us connect to our existence, improves our self esteem along with giving us a positive image of both our current lives and futures.
How to Incorporate Nostalgia into a Marketing Strategy
In all marketing strategies, you will need to investigate the market. In this way, focussing on the public will play a key role in your strategy, in addition to examining the competition and analysing what they are doing and how it affects the decisions of the consumer. When including sentimental nostalgic feelings, you should take the following into consideration:
- Choose the right moment: One thing to bear in mind is that the best time of year to evoke nostalgia varies according to the part of the population you are focussing on. For this reason, it is very important to determine the times of year along with the circumstances that your customers will be the most susceptible to nostalgia. Christmas is an emotional time of year for the general population with christmas marketing campaigns attracting a lot of interest from consumers, so it could be the perfect time to implement your strategy.
- Use the right aesthetic: Using black and white or brown and sepia tones along with employing techniques to remind your customers of the past are very useful tools to create a feeling of nostalgia. Another idea is to include older people in your advertising campaigns, this will generate memories of our grandparents and great grandparents. One thing to bear in mind when adding these elements into your ad campaign is that they should fit your brand image.
- Reuse brand content: Nostalgia tries to remind people about the past, for this reason reimagining older concepts from the brand with new ideas could be a good idea. By including older images and slogans already employed in previous marketing campaigns, it shows that you are updating the brand without abandoning the essence of the older campaign
Examples of Nostalgia in Advertising
- Cola-Cao. You will surely be familiar with the famous Cola-Cao song. Believe it or not, this song is from 1955! The brand says that, even though it is an old song, it is very effective as it has always been recurrent in Cola-Cao advertising campaigns.
- Pokemon Go. It’s no secret that Pokemon defined a whole generation and had a big effect on video gaming. 20 years after its original release, the brand decided to take advantage of the public’s nostalgia for the games and released a mobile app which combined the classic game with augmented reality. It was a risky move that paid off massively, appealing to both older players and millennials.
- Coca Cola. Last year the global drinks brand launched an advertising campaign under the slogan “this Christmas, the best gift is you.” The slogan itself evokes positive feelings but the accompanying video of a father receiving what he really wanted for christmas, a daughter, really tugs on your heartstrings and gives off a feeling of nostalgia.
At the Salmon Factor, we encourage you to use your creativity and imagination to show a more human side to your brand’s audience.
Finally, we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.