Successful brands do one thing exceptionally well: inspire a connection between what you’re selling and the emotional neurocenter of the person you’re selling to.
That is: making people feel something. With any luck, something really good.
We’ve seen the power of nostalgia in delivering the joy, escape, and inspiration consumers crave. And in 2022, we’re feeling nostalgia for a pre-lockdown world. We’ve been holed up, waiting to interact for so long that the inevitable need for human contact is triggering a huge resurgence in experiencing the real world again.
For a brief moment in time, it seemed that brick and mortar stores were a thing of the past. The expediency and ease of online shopping would leave this antiquated way of acquiring goods in the dust of time. Technocrats and futurists would have us trade our physical bodies for an entirely synthetic experience. Our digital selves would thrive in the land of meta.
Turns out: there’s no replacing real human interaction.
We are social creatures. And the nostalgia for something tangible, a scent, an experience– even the mundane ones– may prove to be more powerful than convenience, more important to us than feeling safe and secure in our hypoviral bubbles.
The sweet spot.
In 2020, we went completely virtual. In 2021, we flirted with the idea of hybridization. Merging the two together. But 2022 is shaping up to bring us, in so many ways, back to earth.
We challenge brands to create real world, grounding, brand-centric experiences- and pair them with the fanciful, magical world of digital immersion.
The digital space is here to stay. The physical world refuses to be ignored. It is our duty as creatives, business owners, and decision makers, to merge the convenience and power of this digital landscape with the real world sensory and social needs of our clients and consumers.
I, for one, can’t wait to see what we come up with.
