Customer experience (CX) design is often about moving forward to offer better forms of product discovery, easier payments and enhanced service and support. Based in recent consumer behavior, however, now might be an ideal time to start looking back.

In early January, reports surfaced that online searches for the year 2016 have been surging by hundreds of percentage points. Meanwhile, memes like “Dad, what were you like in the 90s” have taken over social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

The conventional wisdom is that consumers – particularly younger demographics such as Gen Z shoppers – are harkening back to a simpler time. Whether they’re looking back 10 years or 30, the question becomes whether there’s an appropriate way to harness nostalgia as part of a CX strategy.

“Utilizing nostalgia is all about finding cultural resonance in your story,” said Erin Narloch, senior director of business insights and performance at History Factory, a brand heritage and archives agency based in Washington, D.C. “That opens the aperture for customers to see themselves reflected in a brand.”

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History Factory has been working with brands since 1979 to help in that area, producing creative activations and developing content strategies as well as managing an organization’s archives. According to Narloch, harnessing nostalgia goes beyond simply resurfacing artifacts from a brand’s past. It’s also about connecting CX to the political, economic and social landscape of a particular period to make it relevant and meaningful to a consumer audience.

“While it might be cool to reintroduce a concept, we also want to make sure that it stands up to the test of time,” she told 360 Magazine.

Brands like Banana Republic and Hollister are doing a good job of leveraging nostalgia today, she said, whether it’s curating vintage pieces or introducing capsule collections that connect to earlier periods. This can also show up in décor, packaging design, typography and even product landing pages on a retail website, she added.

Nostalgic CX as sensory reconstruction

Graham Sykes, global executive creative director at WPP-owned brand consultancy Landor, suggested CX leaders think of nostalgia in terms of “sensory reconstruction,” where an experience uses texture, sound, smell and other scenes to tap evoke a historical feeling. This can also be as simple as using human staff to make an experience feel more human than highly digitized or assisted by AI.

“Think of the way Lego still brings families together around the table, where parents and children are both builders and both beginners,” he said. “Think of the way record shops, bookshops, even old-school sweet counters trigger memory through sequencing and anticipation. Nostalgia works when people feel transported.”

Physical retail offers powerful sensory storytelling, but the execution must feel elevated, said Rachel Weisser, regional marketing director at Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (Northwest), whose properties include shopping centers. Instead of recreating a ’90s bedroom or a 2010 mall kiosk, she suggested brands can weave in minimalism into their imagery. Customers also love collectible shopping bags or boxes tied to nostalgic eras.

“Nostalgia should feel subtle,” she said. “For 90’s nostalgia, pixel-inspired graphics or lo-fi animations can be a nod to the trend, whereas 2016 leans more to an aesthetic than a historical moment.”

Nostalgia might not be a viable approach to CX for every brand, of course. Sykes said it only works when a brand has genuinely played a role in people’s lives. He pointed to Dr. Martens, where there’s almost a folklore about the pain and perseverance of breaking in its footwear, and then passing on advice about doing so to friends or family members.

“Brands should ask, “Do we have rituals like that? Do people tell stories about us across generations?’” he said. “If the answer is yes, there’s something real to build from. If the answer is no, nostalgia will feel cosmetic very quickly.”

Calculating the ROI of nostalgia-driven CX

Any CX based on nostalgia should still tie back to measurable outcomes. Weisser said increased foot traffic, conversion rates or redemption rates on nostalgia-themed promotions could all help to prove return on investment (ROI). In some cases, a limited campaign might be the best approach.

Nostalgia can be a recurring accent, but it should not be a brand’s permanent identity,” she said.

Though many of the current trends around the 90s and 2016s focus on a more analog world, technology is emerging to help brands develop a nostalgia-infused CX strategy. History Factory, for example, recently launched Chroniqle, which uses AI to sift through an organization’s archival data to see how its brand showed up in a particular period, and any assets it has to work with.

No matter which decades or eras social media users gravitate to next, Narloch said the emphasis should be on determining where memory meets consumers’ imaginations.

“When we’re working with clients, it’s never about the past, it’s always about where they’re going,” she said. “It’s not about the sepia tone photographs. It’s about building upon innovations.”

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