Retro is back

I walked past this showroom yesterday in Bromley and had a good think about how advertisers and marketing people love looking back... to look forward, if you see what I mean. The mini is an iconic symbol. Sticking it almost anywhere will give a favourable impression. It's small, cute, very British and actually has a smile. Plus it has heaps of attitude, probably all stemming from that brilliant Michael Caine film, The Italian Job. It takes you back to the swinging sixties when Britain was pretty much tops at everything, even football. And if you perch a smiling girl on the roof, you've covered all the bases.

Retro marketing has been placed rather uncomfortably under the umbrella of postmodern marketing, mainly because it does not conform to modern marketing. It should not really work. After all, it's been done before. It looks old. We've seen it all before.

But, that's the reason why it works. On the one hand, people have short memories and love the old days. It's all peachy sunsets, quiet roads, cheaper prices, houses for all and Britain winning everything. On the other, they remember the old ads... and love them. And marketeers want to cash in on these two emotions, because it sells.

Kodak produced a retro clunky camera, complete with leather case, recently. It sold fantastically well because it looks like a luxury item. And Curry's now have a range of wooden record players for vinyl records. The units themselves look like something from the last war and play unwieldy, fragile and easily-scratched records. They sell well because fans say the sound is more 'authentic'. CDs don't have the same 'feel'. All nonsense, of course. Marketeers tell fans that the scratches are all part of the songs' appeal. How crazy is that? But... it works.

Galaxy ran a TV ad recently featuring a Vivien Leigh lookalike in some impossibly beautiful location chewing milk chocolate, while Hovis are always hearkening back to the good old days up t'north to where bread gets delivered by bicycle. Daft again. And our little white Mini in the photo, no one remembers that it was small, cramped, slow and like driving a paper bag.

Selling nostalgia works across pretty much all genres, because people like to believe the past was so much better than what's happening today, which, on the balance of things, is pretty sound thinking! Daft again. But then again, marketing is the industry for daft, happy madness.