08/15/2025

Nostalgia Is an Overrated Brand Strategy

Instead, try ‘modern heritage’

Nostalgia is everywhere in marketing today. Legacy fonts, throwback packaging, retro tech revivals, all deployed with the hope that sentimentality alone can stir emotion and move product.  

But here's the problem: nostalgia is novelty, and novelty, by definition, doesn’t last.

It's seductive. It gets clicks. It's emotionally charged, delivering a quick dopamine hit. And let's be real, it's easy. But slapping an old label on a can isn’t strategy. When brands engage nostalgia at a surface level, they often do more harm than good. 

Please select this link to read the complete article from Fast Company.