What do social networking and nostalgia have in common?
Why customers want to see yesterday in a new way…
Increasingly during customer discussion groups run by Directional Insights across the country, we hear customers reminiscing about marketing activities they used to enjoy when in shopping centres when they were young; activities such as face painting, children’s shows, school performances, fashion parades, talent quests, free carousel rides and train rides around the shopping centre.
Basically, what they are talking about is the industry label of the dog and pony show. But why? In a more sophisticated technologically driven society why aren’t these customers saying I want hologram catalogues or on-line fashion parades or DVD catalogues by direct mail. Why are they going back to what they enjoyed in their youth? Well it all revolves around nostalgia and the history of shopping centres.
As life moves at a fast pace, customers increasingly yearn for yesteryear. No pleasures are greater than those of an idealised past. Nostalgia is a natural stabiliser in a changing world. Mid lifers undergo a phenomenal amount of change, but our past does not change. Nostalgia brings the meaning of a static past to a fluctuating present. It helps give direction and hope to our future. And so it is with customers. The 40 year old customers of today were children when shopping centre launchers were a dime a dozen and a clown cost $5 a day. In research we have undertaken these high spending customers yearn to be able to given their children the same experience they remember having in shopping centres.
The baby boomers closely followed by Gen X are currently the biggest spenders in shopping centres. 40-49 years olds currently spend the most per head whilst in a shopping centre. These customers tend to be Female, with children still at home, either young children, or independent children who refuse to leave.
These customers often reminisce very fondly about the activities they enjoyed when they were young, forty years ago, which places us in the 1960-1970s, when shopping centres were also very young.
The first shopping centres to be developed in the late 1950s and early 60s were Chermside Shopping Centre in Brisbane, Top Ryde in Sydney and Chadstone Shopping Centre in Melbourne. Following this, there was an explosion of the suburban shopping centre throughout metropolitan Australia. When each of these shopping centres opened there was a large fanfare, ribbon cutting and you guessed it, dog and pony shows to entertain the children and adults. At each shopping centre opening, of which there were many every year, each shopping centre would try to out do the other. The children that were entertained during this period are the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers of today - with all the money today!
Watching the Gruen Transfer on the ABC last week, they also mentioned the increased use of Nostalgia in advertising since Sept 11 with a rise again since the GFC. I think it is fair to say that building nostalgia back into shopping centre marketing has some fundamental benefits. It does make Baby Boomers and Generation Xs feel good about shopping centres because they remember what they used to really enjoy about shopping centres when they were young. It also allows them to re-live their childhood by giving their children the opportunity to experience some of the wonderful things they experienced in shopping centres. And we know the more a customer likes a centre the more on average they spend there.
Rather than dismissing nostalgic marketing at centres, this type of marketing allows customer to put their halos on and remember a better time when life was simpler and joyous and they were ten years of age.
But nostalgic marketing is not a simple repeat of yesteryear but a reinvention. Today’s fashion parade may be announced as a social networking event using flash-mobbing where customers are invited to turn-up in their favourite outfit and be in the parade themselves. It is not about repeating the 1980s Smiths Chips Gobbledok ad but allowing the character to relive in a new form.
Nostalgic marketing like the fashion parade, the buskers in the centre, the cooking demonstrations, local photographic historical shows etc are marketing activities that are worth reconsidering in your marketing line up, to further entice and entertain Baby Boomers and Generation Xs and their accompanying children – but the execution and communication need be in today’s currency.
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Source: google images |
Certainly, this is not to say these activities should be at the exclusion of all others, but rather they should be included, where appropriate, into the marketers’ business plan of building customer goodwill with the biggest spenders. Television has turned Solid Gold into Australian Idol, what can shopping centres marketers do with the fashion parade and cooking demonstration?
We would love to hear the views of Marketing Managers out there today on whether you agree or disagree, please feel free to drop us a line at info@directional.com.au