Nostalgia sells.

Every generation is a sucker for it, but especially millennials.

I’m convinced the Spice Girls song Goodbye was not just a farewell for Geri, but in fact written by the universe for us kids born in the 80s to say goodbye to our formative years, the greatest decade…. the 90s.

The last decade before phones took over.

A bridge between the archaic ways of the old days and the all encompassing electronic distractions of the future.

The decade which produced some of the best films — you ever look up what films came out in 99 alone? More bangers in a single year than cumulatively over the last 20.

Incredible incredible music.

And, fashion. Fun, eclectic fashion before the minimal aesthetic default kicked in.

Pre 9/11.

Pre financial crisis

Pre COVID.

With the sheer onslaught of turmoil and disasters post 2000, Millennials began to feel nostalgic pretty early on.

So the 90s are cool again, and companies have noticed.

Cue Netflix pumping out endless nostalgia porn.

The new Super Mario Bros is already the 10th biggest animated film OF ALL TIME globally.

Now that millennials have become active consumers and primary purchasers, spending an estimated $1 trillion a year, brands have been diligently advertising to and creating content for this generation.

At the same time Millennials have been famously disinterested in traditional marketing practices.

But one sure fire trick is to employ nostalgia to attract them.

At its most basic, nostalgia marketing provides one of the most important elements of advertising: an emotional hook.

It taps into our positive memories of the past to give us that emotional hook that we want to engage with in the now.

And I, for one, will likely continue to consume content and products that banks on my nostalgia.

Whatever it takes to give me that emotional hit, put on rose-tinted glasses, and pretend even if just for a little while that we’re back in the good old days.