Nostalgia continues to hold a powerful sway over younger generations. But while millennials romanticize the Y2K era they grew up in, Gen Z is increasingly drawn to decades they never experienced firsthand, according to a new report from Vevo.
Last week, the music video hosting service published “Then is Now: A Study on Modern Nostalgia,” a report that explores nostalgia’s influence on content, pop culture and consumerism and the differing perception among generations. The report’s results are based on 1,800 survey responses from an equal number of Gen Z, millennial and Gen X respondents in the U.S., U.K. and Australia.
The report examines nostalgia’s role in to marketing and how brands can leverage it to build emotional connections to consumers. It emphasized how nostalgic advertising—a theme denim brands like Levi’s and Wrangler often incorporates into their marketing strategies—allows brands to “look back” to get ahead by re-engaging existing fans and introducing newer audiences.
The marketing style resonates equality across age groups and lifts purchase intent. Of the Gen Z respondents, 79 percent said nostalgia can be just as “powerful as discovering something new” and 71 percent said they enjoy learning the stories behind iconic moments, trends and eras from the past.
Nostalgia is both personal and community driven. The survey found that 60 percent of respondents identify with the concept of “shared nostalgia,” or cross-generational moments that create collective memories.
Additionally, Gen Z is leading the rise of “borrowed nostalgia” at a significantly higher rate than millennials and Gen X. Whereas Gen X yearns for the ’80s and millennials look back to the ’90s and 2000s, two-thirds of Gen Z respondents report nostalgic emotional attachment to eras they never lived.
As a digitally native consumers, the report highlights how Gen Z has “easy access to timeless content, allowing them to discover and form deep emotional connections with cultural moments from decades before they were born.” This is accelerating nostalgic cycles, the report notes.
Though there are various triggers that spark feelings of nostalgia, ranging from personal memories such as revisiting photos and videos, sharing memories with friends and enjoying food and games from the past to content on social media, the report names music the “ultimate leveler” and music videos the “ultimate nostalgia medium.”
Pop is the most universally nostalgia era, followed by hip-hop among Gen Z and millennial consumers. R&B resonates with 37 percent of millennial respondents, while rock skews older with Gen X.
For brands, the findings suggest that music can be one of the most effective vehicles for nostalgia-driven storytelling. Campaigns like Gap’s viral Katseye advertisement, which revived Kelis’ 2003 hit “Milkshake,” demonstrate how brands can use recognizable songs to connect with older consumers while creating “borrowed nostalgia” among Gen Z audiences discovering the track for the first time.
