The ‘nostalgic’ way to STOP people scrolling past you 💾
7 practical ways to include charming nostalgic content in your marketing efforts
📱 How to Stop the Scroll:
Based on my experience, there are 3 types of graphics that, when shown, immediately make people stop scrolling their feeds:
Nostalgic content
Private chats (i.e. iMessage / Whatsapp screenshots)
Today, we dive into nostalgia. It’s not just a scroll-stopper—it's a spend-maker. 🤑
🧠 Hard Facts about Nostalgia:
Thinking about old times? You’re likely to spend more now. 💸
73% of us love things that remind us of the past.
Nostalgic marketing can boost brand loyalty by up to 36%.
It strengthens social bonds, making people more likely to share (extra word-of-mouth!).
Subscribers to the r/Retro subreddit have doubled to 10k+ since 2020, and r/80sDesign has hit 86k+ subscribers. Big brands are already leveraging nostalgic design in their marketing.
So many brands use nostalgia this these days, like Poolsuite and Spotify:
One of my all-time favorite examples of nostalgic marketing is the Superbowl ad of Coinbase from 2022, based on the old DVD logo flying around on the screen (everybody hoped it would hit a corner - and it did).
💾 7 Nostalgic Marketing Techniques:
How can we use nostalgia effectively? Here are 7 actionable ways:
1️⃣ Then VS Now
Show how you (or someone else) looked 10-30 years ago versus today.
How to do it? Simply post a nostalgic screenshot of any website or product (either your own or someone else’s in your industry) on your social media. Use Web Archive to find this history.
It works wonders.
Bonus: If you’re a new startup, design a “what if” campaign: show what would happen if your product was available on Windows 95. How your 2023 product would’ve looked like in 1995? Think of games (minesweeper and solitaire), MS Paint, Powerpoint 95 effects (“ca-ching sound”), Wordart, etc.
2️⃣ Fake Old Newspaper Ads
Roll out an old-school infomercial or newspaper-style ad. Those ads are horribly fascinating. The little details, like vintage specs and terms, hook people in.
Bonus: Actually get those ads on current-day newspapers.
3️⃣ Nostalgic Playlist
Make a Spotify playlist using nostalgic tracks that relate to your brand.
Bonus: Let the song titles tell a story. I once did it for privacy-tech startup Mine:
4️⃣ Real-Life Toys
Revive old toys like Tamagotchis or tech relics like VHS players, walkman, fax machine, ADSL modem — and link them to your brand. For instance, at cloud security company Wiz we have created an actual Cybersecurity Magic 8-Ball:
5️⃣ Remind Users of their Past
Celebrate milestones and remind users about success stories from the past. If there’s user-generated content (UGC) involved in your product, this one is a must — just like Facebook does with “On This Day”. These positive memory triggers are fantastic for retention.
Bonus: Create shareable images out of those triggers, to increase word-of-mouth.
6️⃣ Pixel Art Ads
Experiment with 8-bit or other retro-themed ads. Turn your brand into a pixel game. It's not just fun, it's eye-catching. The entire brand of Marketing Ideas is pixel art for that exact reason.
7️⃣ Checkout Page Twists
To boost monetization, put nostalgic graphics or copy on the checkout page. For example, when you ask people how they’d like to pay (credit card, PayPal, etc), why not add a fun option for milk caps, pogs, or Atari Coins?
While there was no universal ‘golden age’, if we identify our target audience properly we can determine their happy periods based on their age. Then, our job is to associate those periods with our brand.
If you still need to get your juices flowing:
Every time you click this link, it will send you to a random old website.
Follow ThirtyAF on Instagram.
Google “Y2K aesthetic”.
See you next week ✌️
Tom