There’s a lovely story knocking around this week, announcing something that any good consumer PR agency knows: “Old is the New New”.
The Sun’s lead article on the subject describes how consumer brands such as Fairy Liquid, Milky Bar, Wispa, OXO, Monster Munch, Tetley Tea and others are harking back to yesteryear in everything from their current ad campaigns to their packaging.
A good public relations team has usually been involved in campaigns like these. The fact that a ‘new’ OXO family or Milky Bar Kid is bound to result in massive editorial exposure will have played no small part in the creative thinking behind advertising campaigns for the brands involved.
I remember attending a training course as a young PR account executive when the course leader (an ex-Mirror hack I think) explained that most newspaper readers were older than me (at the time!) and so had longer memories. The attitudes of newsdesks reflected this, he said, which is why a love for nostalgia and an awareness of the past is a fundamental requirement for a consumer PR professional.
I’ve never forgotten this lesson. As far back as 1999, I remember spotting that Brewers Fayre dropping jelly from its children’s party menu would make a for a good PR hook for the brand and it’s why nostalgia features heavily in Tangerine’s PR campaigns for iconic brands like Soreen, Stagecoach and Cuprinol.
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