Why the Past Is the Most Underrated Asset in Your Brand
Why looking backwards can be such a powerful way for brands to move forward, and why it only works when it is rooted in genuine cultural memory rather than lazy trend chasing.
There is a reason nostalgia marketing keeps showing up in the world’s biggest campaigns. It is not because marketers have run out of ideas. It is because memory is emotional, familiarity feels safe, and in uncertain times, people are drawn to brands, products and stories that remind them of who they were.
That is the thread Ben van Rooy and Steph Quantrill pull on in this episode of Canned. They use everything from McDonald’s Friends figurines to Viennetta, Grimace, Coca-Cola, Stranger Things and Barbie to explore why nostalgia remains such a potent commercial force, and where it goes wrong.
What makes this conversation especially interesting is that nostalgia marketing is not a gimmick. At its best, it is the strategic use of shared cultural memory to create recognition, spark emotion and build community. At its worst, it is superficial retro styling, trend hopping, or a brand trying to insert itself into a cultural moment it has no right to claim. That distinction matters because audiences are far too savvy to fall for empty references to the past.
And right now, the past is unusually powerful. Across food, fashion, entertainment and branding, there is a visible return to older ideas, older icons and older aesthetics. Protein bars borrow flavours from Chupa Chups and Violet Crumble. Corn chips revive old brand memories with odd flavour collaborations. Fashion circles back every few decades. Music resurfaces through film and television. Iconic products are reintroduced to new generations with a wink to those who remember them the first time around. Memory has become media. The past has become commercial inventory.
What nostalgia marketing actually is
Ben defines nostalgia marketing as the act of looking back to better times, or at least to times that feel better in memory. More specifically, it is about using shared cultural memory to trigger emotional connection, usually with an older part of your audience. That could be a product, a TV show, a toy, a sound, a design style, a character or even an entire era. The point is not merely to reference the past. The point is to reconnect people with what that past meant to them.
That is why it can be so powerful. People do not just remember products. They remember contexts. Family dinners. Childhood rituals. Teenage obsessions. After-school TV. Festive occasions. Supermarket aisles. Toys they desperately wanted. Songs they overplayed. Desserts reserved for special events. The feeling of belonging to a moment in culture. When a brand successfully taps into those associations, it does not just sell a product. It activates identity.
Steph’s example of Cabbage Patch Kids captures this beautifully. For her, they are not just dolls. They represent a childhood phenomenon, a cultural moment when everyone wanted the same thing and ownership meant social significance. Ben’s example of Viennetta works the same way. It was not simply a frozen dessert. It was a marker of occasion, a symbol of affordable luxury, wrapped in distinctive visual and sensory cues. The log shape. The layered texture. The crack of the chocolate. The ceremonial serving. All of it contributed to a memory structure that stayed intact for decades.
That is the real engine of nostalgia marketing. It builds on memory structures that already exist. It does not need to invent emotion from scratch. It borrows emotional equity from the past and reactivates it in the present.
Nostalgia in uncertain times
One of the most important points raised in the episode is that nostalgia becomes even more effective when the wider environment feels unstable. When times are uncertain, people gravitate towards the familiar and the safe. That is not just a political or economic observation. It is a behavioural one. Familiar brands, familiar rituals and familiar references reduce friction. They offer comfort. They create a sense of continuity.
That helps explain why nostalgia has become so visible in recent years. In a fragmented media landscape where trends arrive and disappear at absurd speed, nostalgia offers something stable. It is legible. It cuts through. It makes people feel like they are in on something. For older audiences, it triggers warm recognition. For younger audiences, it signals coolness, authenticity or rediscovery. In both cases, it provides emotional depth in a world that often feels overly optimised and transactional.
Ben even points out that nostalgia has been used powerfully in politics. “Make America Great Again” is a textbook example of how emotionally charged the longing for a supposedly better past can be. It is a reminder that nostalgia is not inherently good or benign. It is simply powerful. Brands need to understand that power before they use it, because when memory is involved, audiences react with unusual intensity.
McDonald’s, Friends and the millennial wallet
The conversation starts with a question that many marketers might have shrugged off too quickly. Why is McDonald’s offering Friends character figurines with meals? Who exactly is buying a Rachel or Joey toy with their order?
The answer is millennials.
Millennials are now in their peak earning years. They have substantial purchasing power, deep memory banks and strong associations with the cultural products of the 1990s and early 2000s. They tend to respond better to brands that respect their lived experience rather than chasing whatever is newest. For a generation raised on Friends, this campaign is not about plastic figurines. It is about recognition, reward and emotional familiarity.
Steph makes a useful distinction here between functional and emotional marketing. McDonald’s could sell meals through price, convenience or promotional bundles. Instead, this kind of campaign plays a different game. It uses cultural memory to deepen attachment and make the purchase feel more meaningful than the food itself. That matters in categories as competitive as quick service restaurants, where differentiation on product alone is increasingly difficult.
The Friends example also illustrates something broader. Nostalgia marketing is not always about reviving your own past. Sometimes it is about collaborating with the past of your audience. McDonald’s is not a nostalgic Friends brand. It is a mass brand borrowing from a shared cultural property to create emotional relevance. That is a subtle but important distinction.
McDonald’s as a masterclass in modern nostalgia
The Friends tie-in is not an isolated stunt. Steph notes that McDonald’s has form in this area. The Grimace campaign is one of the clearest recent examples of a legacy brand using nostalgia with energy and relevance. Rather than simply reintroducing an old character, McDonald’s turned Grimace into a contemporary cultural event, complete with products, visual identity and a sense of playful discovery. It took an old memory and gave it new social currency.
The Tamagotchi reference follows a similar logic. That campaign tapped into layered nostalgia by reviving not only a product but an entire mode of relating to products: collectability, emotional attachment and low-stakes obsession. When Ben describes this as “layered nostalgia”, he puts his finger on something important. The most effective nostalgia marketing works on more than one level. It can recall a brand, a behaviour, a medium, an aesthetic and a social feeling all at once.
McDonald’s understands this because it treats nostalgia not as costume, but as experience design. The value is not merely in the object. It is in what the object represents. The past is being used as a device to get people back into the ecosystem, deepen brand affection and create moments people want to talk about.
Coca-Cola and the long game of brand consistency
If McDonald’s shows how to reactivate nostalgic symbols, Coca-Cola demonstrates another truth altogether: sometimes a brand becomes nostalgic simply by staying consistent for long enough.
Coca-Cola is one of the great nostalgia brands, not necessarily because it is constantly doing nostalgia campaigns, but because it has maintained such a stable brand world over time. The curves of the bottle. The calligraphic logo. The visual language of Americana. The seasonal references. The enduring Santa iconography. All of it contributes to a sense of continuity.
This is a valuable reminder for marketers. Nostalgia is not always something you switch on. In some cases, it is something you earn through repetition, memory and restraint. Coca-Cola’s brand consistency means it can lean into the past without looking contrived, because the past is already built into the shape of the brand. Audiences trust it because the cues have remained familiar across decades.
That is why nostalgia marketing and brand building are closely related. A brand that constantly reinvents itself may struggle to create the kind of enduring memory structures nostalgia depends on. A brand that knows what it stands for, and expresses that consistently over time, creates a bank of recognisable assets that can later be drawn upon for emotional effect.
Barbie, Stranger Things and the power of cultural reactivation
Some of the most effective nostalgia marketing right now is happening through entertainment.
The Barbie movie is the standout example. It did not merely revive an old toy. It reactivated an entire cultural framework. It invited audiences to revisit Barbie through the lens of memory, identity, irony and reinvention. It appealed simultaneously to those who grew up with the brand and to younger consumers encountering it in a newly elevated cultural form.
What made Barbie so effective was that it had scale, confidence and a point of view. It did not treat nostalgia as sacred. It treated it as material to be reworked. That is one of the reasons it travelled so well across generations and categories, even if many brands then overreached by trying to attach themselves to the pink wave without any real relevance. Steph is clear on this. Some brands absolutely should not have forced themselves into the Barbie conversation just because it was dominating culture. That is trend chasing, not strategy.
The Stranger Things and New Coke example is another standout. Coca-Cola took one of the most notorious failures in its own history and cleverly reintroduced it through a series set in 1985. This was not just product placement. It was narrative placement. The show’s setting made the brand’s historical misstep feel contextually authentic, and the campaign built around that reference turned embarrassment into cultural currency.
Steph also notes the wider effect of Stranger Things. It did not only activate nostalgia for those old enough to remember the 1980s. It brought younger audiences into that world as well. Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” became a modern hit because the show translated an older cultural artefact into a contemporary emotional moment. That is the intergenerational power of nostalgia when used well. It bridges people through shared discovery, even when their original points of reference are different.
Nostalgia is not just for older audiences
One of the most useful insights from the discussion is that nostalgia marketing does not only pull older audiences back in. It can also pull younger audiences forward.
Younger generations often rediscover previous decades and recode them as cool. Fashion is cyclical. Music is sampled and remixed. Older design languages become fresh again. In that environment, nostalgia becomes both memory for some and discovery for others.
That helps explain why 1990s aesthetics have become so visible again, and why references that might seem niche or dated can suddenly feel culturally hot. A younger consumer does not need to have lived through the era to respond to its symbols. What they need is an accessible entry point: a campaign, a film, a social trend or a product collaboration. When it works, the past becomes not only relevant but desirable.
This is why nostalgia marketing can be such an efficient bridge between brand heritage and audience growth. Done properly, it allows a brand to honour its past without becoming trapped by it. It gives long-time customers a reason to reconnect and gives new customers a reason to care.
The challenge: authenticity versus opportunism
For all its upside, nostalgia marketing is full of traps. Both Ben and Steph keep coming back to the same warning: if it feels fake, forced or self-serving, it will not work. People are emotionally protective of the memories and cultural moments that matter to them. Brands are not dealing with neutral assets. They are dealing with identity, affection and lived experience.
Older audiences do not want to be patronised. They want to be recognised. That is a subtle but vital point. A campaign that lazily references the past without understanding what the past meant risks insulting the very people it is trying to attract. A brand that radically changes a beloved property may create backlash rather than excitement, because it has interfered with memory rather than enriched it.
Steph adds another layer. Relevance matters. If your audience is largely millennial, choose a nostalgic cue that means something to millennials. Do not reach for a reference that belongs to an entirely different generation and expect it to land. The nostalgic moment needs to match both the customer base and the brand. Otherwise the campaign feels arbitrary.
This is also why corporate anniversaries can be mishandled. Steph raises the example of brands celebrating their own birthdays, and whether consumers truly care about how long a company has existed. Ben’s response is blunt. Nostalgia should be about shared reflection, not a selfish one. If the campaign is just a brand congratulating itself for being old, that is not nostalgia marketing. That is self-importance. The emotional centre has to sit with the audience, not the organisation.
Nostalgia works best when it builds community
Perhaps the most compelling conclusion from the episode is that nostalgia marketing is really about community. Ben describes it as a way to build around shared understanding. That framing matters because it moves the discussion beyond tactics and into meaning.
A nostalgic campaign is not just a familiar picture or a recycled character. It is an invitation to participate in collective memory. That explains why the strongest examples often create conversation, collectability or rediscovery. They give people something to recognise together. They prompt stories. They make audiences feel seen in a way that pure performance marketing often does not.
At the same time, nostalgia is not soft. It can be commercially hard-edged. It can drive foot traffic, sales, engagement, earned media and cultural relevance. But those outcomes come from emotional truth, not from retro styling alone.
Practical advice for brands
For marketers considering whether nostalgia has a place in their strategy, this episode offers some clear practical guidance.
Start with your audience, not your own preferences. Ask what cultural references, products, periods or properties genuinely matter to the people you are trying to reach. Nostalgia only works when there is something meaningful already sitting in the audience’s memory.
Make sure the reference fits your brand. Just because a cultural moment is big does not mean you need to participate. The wrong partnership or aesthetic looks like desperate trend jumping. The right one feels inevitable.
Build on memory structures rather than overwriting them. The job is not to vandalise what people loved. The job is to honour it, refresh it and give it new relevance.
Think beyond direct sales activation. Nostalgia is especially useful when you want to build emotional distinction, rekindle affection or bring lapsed audiences back into the brand. It can support acquisition, but it is often strongest when used to deepen meaning.
Remember that younger audiences can still be part of the equation. A well-executed nostalgic campaign does not exclude people who were not there the first time. It gives them a way in. That is often where the cultural magic happens.
Do not confuse heritage with entitlement. A long history is only useful if it means something to customers. Shared memory beats self-celebration every time.
Why this matters right now
There is a temptation to view nostalgia marketing as a light topic, especially when the examples involve toys, old desserts, TV sitcoms and childhood collectibles. But beneath the surface is something much more serious about how brands create relevance.
In a crowded market, emotional connection remains one of the few durable advantages. Nostalgia gives brands a way to access that connection through symbols people already understand. It also forces a discipline that many modern campaigns lack. To use nostalgia effectively, a brand has to know its audience, know its cultural territory and know the difference between resonance and noise. Memory is not decoration. It is meaning.
The best nostalgia marketing feels both familiar and fresh. It honours the past without becoming trapped in it. It offers recognition without laziness. It creates emotional shorthand without oversimplifying the audience. And when it works, it reminds us that the most powerful brand stories are often the ones people already carry with them.
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Ben van Rooy (Human Digital): LinkedIn Steph Quantrill (Cue Marketing): LinkedIn