Is anything new anymore? Hardly. The box office is a never ending cycle of trailers for yet another sequel. Most early 2000s television shows are back for a reboot. And a lot of your favorite radio hits are, you guessed it, samples! Nostalgia is a big trend right now, and companies are looking back to retro ads for inspiration as they chart their paths forward.
Of the many content marketing strategies that businesses should be exploring right now, retro ads may be one you haven’t considered. However, retro ads are shaping modern media, bringing old school charm to new and modern platforms.
Why Do Retro Ads Work?
Throwback retro ads give the viewer a sense of nostalgia. Attention is at a premium and what better way to stand out than to publish visuals that help people remember a time when a single, median, full time income was sufficient to purchase a single family home.
Creating Campaigns of Nostalgia
Our world is currently hyper connected. Even so, we’re constantly hearing reports of unprecedented levels of loneliness. This is why nostalgia is a great thing for advertisers to incorporate into their campaigns. Nostalgia helps us to reconcile who we are now with who we once were. As time passes, it’s easy to not notice just how much has changed, how much we’ve changed. Nostalgia reminds us to examine how we feel in the present.
At its core, nostalgia is a super pro social emotion. It can connect us to others through shared experience. We see this in how people derive warm, fuzzy feelings from recounting the “good ‘ol days” with childhood friends or former classmates. This experience can help the human brain contend with the irreversibility of time. So, while there may exist a bit of bitter longing for the past, we’re comforted by the possibility of revisiting it, and in a sense, living it again.
Retro Ads Signal Humanity
As marketing becomes more dominated by the powers of artificial intelligence, people are dying for human connection. Referencing the past has become a strategic way to signal prestige and sophistication. Currently, the “old money” aesthetic is trending on TikTok, with young women seeking to appear more refined and established.
Even fast fashion giant PrettyLittleThing has pivoted toward a classic, timeless look — an intentional departure from its previous “baddie culture” branding. Even though the 18-29 year old demographic of women served by PrettyLittleThing did not experience the era that the brand is now mirroring, the company still made the risky move toward a more modest aesthetic. This taps into another type of nostalgia that predates one’s own existence, historical nostalgia.
Should We Long For Ads of the Past?
While they signal simpler times, retro ads proliferate messaging that would never be accepted on a billboard today. A simple Pinterest search will garner a plethora of questionable content. Retro ad imagery is steeped in patriarchal undertones where women are subjugated to the role of homemaker or worse, object.
Retro Ads of the Past Are ‘Cancelable’ Today
Could gender role centric content be the very reason why this aesthetic is trending again? As of late, there is a segment of millennial and GenZ populations that are idealizing this very time period. Except now, it goes by the name #TradWife, traditional wife, culture. #TradWife culture paints images of Americana where men were the sole providers and women (white women) did not work outside of the home. The catch, however, is that women didn’t refrain from working outside the home by choice – they weren’t allowed to.
It’s very likely that the longing for these “traditional” values stem from the unending stress that modern women are under. Today, the average American woman is expected to uphold the expectations of marriage, family and secular employment. Because secular employment is not commonly optional for women with families, it’s a financial necessity.
What Makes A Retro Ad So Special?
The current marketing aesthetic can read a bit homogenous. We’ve been living digitally for the past two decades and requirements have changed to fit the most common medium — mobile screens. Over time, consumers have acclimated to heavily simplistic sans serif typeface and 4k imagery.
Retro Ads Had Retro Attitudes
Retro ads served different purposes. Instead of needing to be seen clearly on a screen, things needed to be printed legibly and visible from the street. Neutrals were not “in”. Though not always crisp, the colors were rich and bold, taking the main stage to communicate urgency, movement, utility and most importantly, fun. During the retro ads era, we were closer to Warhol’s pop art craze rather than that of the Kardashian empire.
These illustrations reflected an idealized world untouched by mass consumerism, where families shared meals together daily, friends gathered without the distraction of technology, and there was a collective sense that life was on a steady path toward the better.
Retro Ads Took Typeface Very Seriously
Retro ad copy had to pack a punch. While attention spans may have been longer, grabbing interest still relied on brevity. Short copy needs a strong typeface, and if you want someone to read your subhead, your headline needs to be really good, even salacious maybe.
Like the era, many typography choices were gendered. Depending on who advertising agencies wished to influence, the letters on the page changed. Automotive makers, cigarette companies and alcoholic beverages went big with heavily weighted letters and strong alignment. They played with scale, often stretching letters super tall or widening them from one edge of the page to the other. More commonly, advertisements targeted towards women frequently used more thin, fluid strokes, usually something in between a more legible cursive and a script.
Many of the connotations adopted throughout this advertising period became responsible for how we view typography today. Sports apparel ads often choose bulky text, whereas women’s intimate apparel lean towards lightweight fonts.
What Can We Learn From Retro Ads?
Although the images of the past have their pain points, we can learn a lot from the degree of concentration on the subject. Unlike today, ads were not ingested with the same frequency that we now experience. Retro ads lived in the daily newspaper, on the back of your favorite magazine or at the local bus stop. Life moved slower back then but the concept of brevity proved effective.
Simple Is Often The Most Effective
A lot of brand recognition resulted from these very images printed on gasp paper. Coca Cola implemented such simplicity exceptionally well. They made their famous glass bottle the drink of the nation by featuring only it, time and time again. As the brand grew, their advertisements used other hints of symbolism to frame the drink as the beverage shared with friends or family. The lesson here is clear: help your consumer to understand you first, then add the rest later.
How Retro Ads Should Influence Your Brand
Whether you’re beginning a product based business or something more abstract, you’d do well to draw from the impact that retro ads had on the marketing landscape. Print ads crawled so Meta ads could walk. Brands today can borrow from their brevity and their bold design choices to set themselves apart from the modern creative. Styles and preferences continue to change but you can inspire a few warm feelings in your audience with an ode to the past.