Nostalgia sells — but you have to get it right
From our US edition
This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. People don’t believe me when I tell them we created Hendrick’s Gin 20 years ago — mostly because the bottle looks like it’s been on the market for more like a century. Over the course of those 20 years, we’ve gone from an unusual little gin to a global brand. We sell more than one million cases a year. The secret is nostalgia. Most of the products we design at Quaker City Mercantile, the creative agency I run in Philadelphia, are known as ‘nostalgia’ brands. Nostalgia can be a powerful thing, but it’s not as easy as slapping a faux-vintage label on and calling it a day. Any nostalgic design has to come from an inherent truth about the brand.
