Imagine, one fine day or quite late at night, you suddenly find yourself rummaging through your old photographs, wanting to reminisce. Then there are days when you come across a dusty box in some corner of your house that catches you off guard but seems faintly familiar. Whether on purpose or not, no matter the kind of person you are, the instant you stumble upon this object, you can not help but appreciate its bittersweet tugs on your heart. That, my friend, is the inescapable force of nostalgia. Brands and businesses have, time and again, used nostalgia as a marketing tool. But movies and series also use nostalgia in the entertainment business to attract viewers. Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli is the finest example of this and can be credited with creating nostalgia through animated movies.
This time, Studio Ghibli has put enormous faith in Hayao Miyazaki’s creative philosophy and decided not to promote Miyazaki’s last directorial, “How Do You Live?”
The press and the general public received very little to no information about the project in the months, weeks, and days before its release. Toshio Suzuki, also Studio Ghibli’s president and co-founder, took the audacious step of forgoing all film promotion, skipping trailers, TV commercials, and newspaper ads. The studio is waging this big gamble depending on the phenomenon of nostalgic sentiment that Miyazaki’s works have always invoked in spectators like you and me.
Dear Reader, If you have ever watched a Studio Ghibli movie, you may have noticed, from the scrupulous attention to the architecture in “Howl’s Moving Castle” and the landscape of prewar Japan in “My Neighbor Totoro”, Hayao Miyazaki has shown the most explicit trait of replicating a past world now gone. Miyazaki appears as content to portray “an idealised and highly stylised Europe or a quasi-feudal Japan”.
The secret to Miyazaki’s brand of nostalgia is fusing fantasy, magic, and spirituality with highly realistic and detailed environments. Each of Miyazaki’s films features exquisitely animated backgrounds with elaborate designs influenced by the scenery around us. Every story has a unique but relatable setting. Those with rural or pastoral settings frequently deal with environmental themes. Examples include the fantasy post-apocalyptic wasteland and rainforests of “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind”, the perfectly planned European town of “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, which follows the whimsical journey of Kiki and Jiji, the rich primaeval forest of “Princess Mononoke”, and the ever-changing gorgeous landscape of “Howl’s Moving Castle”. On the other hand, “Grave of Fireflies” was “pain and destruction, paired with catharsis and healing”.
“From Up On Poppy Hill” and “The Wind Rises” taught me to be confident in my skin and pursue my dreams and passion. In “Whisper of the Heart,” I saw the story of a young writer like Shizuku, who was insecure but dedicated, experiences that mirrored my own. “Only Yesterday” and “Arrietty” account for the latent desire to escape to the verdant greenery and the lamentation for what could have been. “Ocean Waves” colours the stories of our teenage crushes that oftentimes bloom into beautiful romances. “Ponyo” and “When Marnie was there” can attest to its mystical allure and unmistakable oddity that confounds adults yet perfectly appeals to a child’s logic.
But more than anything, Miyazaki’s creation of his world in “My Neighbor Totoro” and “The Tale of Princess Kaguya” inspired my imagination and cultivated my appreciation for Japanese culture. The inventive storytelling in films like “Spirited Away” and “Castle in the Sky” sparked my interest in writing and fantasy.
Every Miyazaki cinema has taught me something about life. Each movie reflected a past I no longer live or a future I crave. These movies supported me during difficult times when hope eluded me. To me, Studio Ghibli movies are nostalgia, even for the past I never lived and a time I never witnessed. That is why I do not need a trailer to be excited for Miyazaki’s final venture, “How Do You Live?” Because I know what to expect, and at the same time, I have no idea what world I will be travelling to this time, a past all too familiar or a reality alien to me.
That is the case with everyone anticipating this movie’s release. Because during an era of rampant commercialisation, getting a peak into a world of large gardens and the surrounding woods and countryside you grew up in is the only incentive a viewer like me will ever need.
Although it has already been established that marketing tactics based on emotion are effective, appealing to people’s good memories can be a powerful strategy. Smart businesses are engaging with their customers through retro roots in everything from fast food and morning cereals to gaming consoles. This practice is known as nostalgia marketing. It is a comparatively potent new marketing trend to engage customers.
Nostalgia is a bittersweet and predominantly positive emotion that arises from meaningful memories. Using positive, well-known emotions and ideas from earlier decades to foster faith in new concepts and re-energise contemporary campaigns is known as nostalgia marketing. In other words, it is a strategy for tying your business to a feeling or idea that clients already adore and associate with happy experiences. By leveraging well-known concepts to connect a company with something for which clients have pleasant recollections, nostalgia marketing generates a good, emotional sentiment.
Several brands are now employing this strategy to evoke memories of the past in their interactions with clients to engage and connect with their target audiences. People like nostalgia in campaigns because when they come across this type of marketing, they remember something they love from their past and long to experience it again.
An example of this strategy is Bob Ross’ Beauty Is Everywhere TV show, which is also known as The Joy of Painting. This show gained an enormous comeback in popularity after Netflix added it to its lineup in June 2016. Adobe started to pay attention to the public’s resurgence in interest in Bob Ross. Then, Adobe developed a marketing campaign based on nostalgia utilising a Bob Ross impersonator as part of a set of instructional videos designed to advertise the Adobe Photoshop Sketch program. Along with embracing the unexpected interest in Ross spurred on by Netflix, they also developed a nostalgic campaign. The campaign was largely effective because Adobe strongly emphasised the series’ accuracy and collaborated with Bob Ross Inc. to ensure that every element was accurate.
Audiences respond positively to nostalgia-focused advertising because it always feels pleasant to revisit happy recollections. In addition to the busy work schedules of day-to-day life and never-ending obligations, fond memories make us smile, which makes us more receptive to marketing messages. We are considerably more likely to act when we care about something. The holy grail of brand marketing is to emotionally connect with the target audience or customers by sharing a compelling memory from the past.
Building connections through nostalgia is an easy method for businesses. Companies take advantage of the upbeat emotions that frequently accompany trips down memory lane in an era of impersonal digital media. Positive references from the early 2000s, 1990s, 1980s, and even the 1970s can connect brand messages with the past. This makes the attempt more meaningful to us.
Miyazaki presents his movies as a reflection of present-day social complexities. Ghibli movies are about an enchanting past, a lost present, and the search for identity. The standard tone in most Ghibli movies is the amalgamation of everything good and evil and how it persists in the shade of grey. A sentiment like this leads to nostalgia. And when the sense of longing overcomes you for a time gone, everything and anything (be it a product or a movie) become instantly lucrative.
Author- Tahia Afra Jannati
