'Nostalgia isn't what it used to be'......
Nostalgia describes a bittersweet emotion where we view the past with both sadness and longing. In other words it is looking back on emotional memories. References to 'the good old days' are increasingly common as advertisers call up memories of youth and hope these feelings will translate to what they are selling today.
It can be thought as 'a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one's life, to one's home or homeland.' (dictionary.com)
For example these items are memories of my childhood
Nostalgia hit the chocolate world to great effect in 1999, when Cadburys Flake went on air with old advertising and witnessed a dramatic increase in sales. Mars then created Revels which was a bag containing a variety of chocolates. It was also was a dormant brand however Revels found trouble in the market for some time unable to find a specific target audience. Revels differentiated in the market than other chocolates as they provided a variety of sweets from orange to coffee which some people hated, whilst other loved them This specific brand worked due to taking people back to their childhood when they were playing eeny, meeny, miny, mo..
There are still a variety of ads today that try to take the audience back to their childhood memories by using certain themes. The reason why advertisers do this is to make consumers link the good feelings at that specific time with the products they are trying to sell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4tFzuFGUOI- Hovis advert- depicting the last 122 years. This advert is especially effect due to different people experiencing these certain events such as the war and the miners strikes.
 |
| World War Two |
 |
| Miners Strike |
CocaCola advert
 |
| Present Time |
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jAeqQwY1xdE&feature=related- Coca-Cola advert
There are 5 senses that can act as a trigger to take consumers back to a nostalgic moment or a time in their past which has involved happpiness.
1) Music- sounds can trigger these emotions for example if heard a certain tune when growing up
2) Images- photos or paintings
3) Smells- perfume
4) Touch- silk
5) Taste- cider
Learning and Memory
“Every time an advertisement or commercial appears, the objective is to have the reader or viewer learn something …. and remember what he learned “ (Britt 1955)
“ …. our ultimate aim is to teach them brand loyalty” (Rice 1997)
 |
| Lynx- Unconditional Stimulus |
 |
| Lynx- Conditional Stimulus |
 |
| Bounty- Unconditional Stimulus |
 |
Bounty- Conditional Stimulus |
Red Bull- Unconditional stimulus
Red Bull- Conditional stimulus
Memory
“learning is the acquisition of knowledge & memory is the storage of internal representations of that knowledge” (Blakemore, 1988)
“without memory we would be servants of the moment …… relying on reflexes …. Civilisation itself is the distillation of human memory”
Learning is a change in behaviour caused by experience, it can occur thorugh simple associations between a stimilus and a response. Before the term broke up, we viewed a shopping list of items that we needed to learn in the correct order and discovered by saying each item in a sentence that rhymed whith the number of the order you were supposed to name them in it was almost impossible not to remember them!
Cognititve learning occurs as a result of metal processes, e.g observational learning takes place when the consumer performs a beahaviour as a result of someone else perfomring it and being rewarded.
When a stimulus is capable of recreating a personal event, even after many years, there often follows a bitter-sweet sentiment known as nostalgia” (Dubois, 2000)
“Nostalgia has been described as a bitter-sweet emotion, where the past is viewed with both sadness and longing.” (Solomon, 2000)
