Enough nostalgia marketing, please

Welcome back to Digital Gravity 💪

Every Friday, we share strategies to help you grow your business with content marketing and reach ‘critical mass’ in the great online game.

This week, Maddie returns to Digital Gravity with a rant about nostalgia marketing.

Enjoy 👇

🧃 Enough With the Nostalgia 🧃

By Maddie Kamradt

Okay, I hate to be that person, but I am officially over nostalgia marketing.

Every brand and their mom is trying to sell me my childhood like it’s some limited-edition drop. 

Pepsi dragged back its 2000s swirl logo. 

Forever 21 and Juicy Couture are still convinced I want to walk around with rhinestones on my pants. 

Crocs keeps pushing novelty collabs as if Shrek shoes are going to unlock my inner child.

I was born in 2000. 

I’ve lived this stuff already. I don’t need a “Y2K-inspired hoodie” to remind me of what my middle school bedroom looked like (covered in One Direction posters and a broken mirror that NEVER stuck to the door.)

Here’s what gets me: these brands act like recycling my childhood is the pinnacle of creativity. It’s not.

It’s a shortcut.

And the more I see it, the less I care.

Yes, I’ll always remember the That’s So Suite Life of Hannah Montana crossover like it was prestige television. 

Yes, I can still quote Camp Rock like it belongs in the cultural hall of fame (#TeamNick). And yes, my idea of high drama at age seven was waiting to see if Troy Bolton would pick basketball or Gabriella.

But do I need to be force-fed that same childhood on Instagram every day? Absolutely not.

The thing about nostalgia is that it only works if it feels rare, like a little inside joke that sneaks up on you. 

When it’s forced into every ad, restock, and collab, it doesn’t feel like a wink.

It feels like being cornered at a party by someone who won’t stop telling you how great middle school was.

And honestly? I don’t want to relive being twelve on repeat.

I want brands to give me something so good right now that it becomes nostalgia ten years from today. 

AND I want brands to give me something new to spend my big girl money on.

New stories. New products. New ads that actually matter.

Give me the campaigns my future self will look back on with embarrassing affection, the way I look back on Zac Efron singing with aggressively blue eyes in High School Musical 2.

And this doesn’t just apply to cereal boxes and shoe collabs.

If you’re selling B2B or you’re an up and coming thought leader trying to grow your online influence, the same rule holds: don’t recycle clichés from fifteen years ago hoping they’ll hit again. 

Create original insights that feel fresh right now, and those will be the moments people remember down the line.

Because if the only thing you’re selling me is the past, I’ll stop buying your present. #micdrop

-- Maddie

Hope you guys picture me writing this like this, btw.