Nostalgia Marketing (& Robert Opie)
Nostalgia is always ‘in’ with consumers and never more so than now. In these uncertain times there is something reassuring about details that once formed part of a forgotten daily life. We are happily enticed by comforting reprints of ‘Janet & John’ reading books www.waterstones.com, Bakelite telephones www.pedlars.co.uk, tins of Bird’s Custard powder and the Stylophone. www.iwantoneofthose.com Unsure of the future, what could be better than the safe charm of childhood puddings and books, objects and advertising campaigns, packaging that evoke the known parameters of the predictable past? Publishers are raiding backlists, chefs and food manufacturers are pulling out old recipes, attics and salerooms are being scoured, safe in the knowledge that reliable crowd pleasers are to be found, ready to share in the spirit of heartwarming retro chic.
With nostalgia fashionable once again, there can be no better source of inspiration than the ‘Museum of Brands’, just off the Portobello Road in Notting Hill www.museumofbrands.com. A rich kaleidoscope of images and iconic brands, seen in packs, posters and adverts, fads and fashions, toys and games.
There is something wonderful about a collector, someone slightly maverick, perhaps, who starts to collect in complete innocence. All the better if they buck the trend. One day this innocent collection, built on personal pleasure and obsession, reaches a point of such critical mass it has real authority. This is how it happened for consumer historian, Robert Opie. For most of us, packaging is something we discard. Once it has exerted its magic on us and persuaded us to part with our money, it is usually disposed of in the rush to get at the contents. Not so for Opie.
His parents amassed a vast collection of children’s books (considered the best private collection and which now forms part of the Bodleian Library in Oxford www.ouls.ox.ac.uk). Collecting, for Opie, was in the blood and started predictably with stamps as a teenager. Soon this became boring and he stumbled across packaging, which wisely he recognised as a vast uncolonised area and one which wouldn’t be held back by any shortage of funding. His project had a serious dimension from the start, piecing together a world that no one had looked at, charting an important part of the history our commerce and trade, charting the fascinating progress of all we have always been so quick to throw away. This social and historical aspect to the collection means that it’s not only the aesthetically pleasing or the historically fashionable that is included. It extends to all aspects of daily life – toys, technology, travel, souvenirs, fashion, magazines and design, making it all the more rewarding to see and to plunder for ideas!
Posted by Katie Barr-Sim 8 months ago in
About Katie Barr-Sim
Katie is a business development director. She still wonders what she’ll be when she grows up but has always had a keen eye for design and a way with words.