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Why does nostalgia marketing resonate so much with today’s audience?
To put it simply – because it feels really, really good. Nostalgia has that unique ability to take us back to our most cherished moments and allows us to relive them, one moment at a time.
Which is great news for brands too as it brings them one step closer to the holy grail of brand marketing by helping them reach audiences on a deeper, more emotional level.
As a data-driven agency, we know that there’s a story behind every statistic. A real human moment that lingers and lives in the memory and goes beyond the data point it creates.
With the aim of surprising and delighting our clients, we decided to send our clients a token of appreciation, a nod to our working relationship and, also, a showcase of how we use data to create meaningful connections. Combining personalised marketing and the most celebrated sporting event in the world, we presented some of our clients with a little something for them to hold on to.
Every four years, the World Cup triggers an avalanche of nostalgia. Fans and faultfinders alike find themselves caught up and swept back to summer’s gone. Our challenge was to capture that feeling in one 270 x 210 x 90mm box. We wanted to reach our clients on a highly personalised level while showing how feelings such as nostalgia can be harnessed to build meaningful connections.
To do this, we gave each of the clients a memento to keep at their desk to take them back to those moments. A high-quality frame with a personalised football jersey, accompanied with copy that triggers collective emotions.
You always remember your first time. If football means anything to you, then you’ll doubtlessly have a first World Cup, when the drama of the event was first imprinted on your memory - permanently. Even non-football fans remember their first World Cup, as they get taken in by national pride and the drama. We wanted to give the clients something that plays on that nostalgia, and also acknowledges who they are.
Our starting point was researching the clients’ nationalities. Then we considered their age and which World Cup might have been their formative one, with this in mind, we made sure each jersey was an exact reproduction of that era. The final customised touch was the client’s name printed on the back, in the typographic style from that generation.
Sticking a jersey in a frame is not enough to stir our emotions. We also accompanied the shirts with copy in order to trigger collective memories. Football was the first protocol, however, to match the passion and drama that unfolds during the World Cup, we chose to weave in Freakonomics and insights that aligned with the time of each tournament.
We wanted to take the reader back to their first World Cup and feel pleasantly connected to their past, with smile-inducing data and insights. Poetry is often considered the language of recollection and reminiscence, so the copy for each shirt was researched and crafted in ‘stanza’ style.
From the data-driven insights to the human touch of hand-delivery, we put thought into every piece of this DM. The first thing the client saw was the belly-band, which sported Lou Reed’s line “I don’t like nostalgia unless it’s mine”. It brought the whole package together and was the perfect icebreaker, showcasing how our understanding of our audience enabled us to deliver an authentic message.
Our ability to see past the statistics and to the moments of triumph, anguish, and longing is what allows us to create meaningful connections with audiences. At Epsilon, our work begins and ends with people: the ones we speak to, and the ones we speak for. As a data-driven creative agency, we translate data into a real sense of what moves and motivates us.
Our DM package was a tangible representation of this, a gift that stirred up fond memories for the clients and, we hope, created exciting new ones.
