Nostalgia
Invoking an idealized past, one the audience half-remembers and half-invents, so that a proposal is accepted as a return to it rather than judged as a change to the present.
Memory is kind. The past that people long for has had its boredom, fear, and injustice filtered out, and what remains is warm. The device points at that warmth and attaches a proposal to it: this policy, this product, this leader will bring it back. The audience evaluates the feeling, which is real, instead of the proposal, which is not the past and cannot restore it.
Svetlana Boym distinguished reflective nostalgia, which knows the past is gone and dwells on the longing, from restorative nostalgia, which believes the past can be rebuilt and sets out to do it. The device runs on the second. It differs from appeal to tradition in what it sells: tradition offers continuity, nostalgia offers return. Exploits Rosy Retrospection and Declinism.
Historical examples
The Reagan campaign's "Prouder, Stronger, Better" advertisement, remembered as "Morning in America," showed sunrise over small towns, a wedding, a flag going up, and a voice noting that "it's morning again in America." The film's argument was that a lost country had been returned; it offered almost no policy, and it is studied as the model of the device.
Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. Packaging the Presidency: A History and Criticism of Presidential Campaign Advertising. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Interwar movements across Europe promised a return to national greatness located in a selectively remembered past: imperial Rome, the medieval Reich, a pre-industrial village life that had never existed as described. Boym's study traces how the longing was manufactured and how its restorative form fed political programs.
Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001.
In advertising and commerce
Volkswagen's New Beetle (1998) and Pepsi's "Throwback" packaging (2009) sold new products as returns: a shape from the 1960s, a can and a recipe from the 1970s. Neither was the original. Both were bought, in part, for the feeling of getting something back.
Brown, Stephen, Robert V. Kozinets, and John F. Sherry Jr. "Teaching Old Brands New Tricks: Retro Branding and the Revival of Brand Meaning." Journal of Marketing 67, no. 3 (2003): 19–33. Source
Find a message that promises to bring something back. What is the something? When did it exist? Look up one fact about that time that the message leaves out.
In the wild
Short examples of the technique at work, each with what to notice. The same examples are questions in the quiz, where the answer is not given away.
"Remember when you could leave your door unlocked? Vote to bring that neighborhood back."
What to notice. A warm memory with no date is attached to a vote; the mechanism of the return is absent.
"Taste the way it used to be." The product launched last year.
What to notice. A feeling of return sold with a new product; there is no "used to be" for it.
"We had jobs, we had respect, we had a country. We can have them all again."
What to notice. A golden age asserted, a present defined by loss, and "again" doing the work of a plan.
Sources
- Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books, 2001. ISBN 978-0465007080
- Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. Packaging the Presidency. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0195089424
- Brown, Stephen, Robert V. Kozinets, and John F. Sherry Jr. "Teaching Old Brands New Tricks." Journal of Marketing 67, no. 3 (2003): 19–33. doi:10.1509/jmkg.67.3.19.18657
- Pratkanis, Anthony, and Elliot Aronson. Age of Propaganda. Rev. ed. New York: W. H. Freeman, 2001. ISBN 978-0805074031