Full Frontal PR Report
Richard Laermer from trendSpotting

Everyone is afraid of the unknown, especially in these days of accelerated change. What will people do to relieve their anxiousness and continue functioning? They’ll return to the past. Marc Gobe is CEO of d/g* Worldwide, a top brand and image consultancy whose clients have included Coca-Cola, IBM, Victoria’s Secret, Gillette, Starbucks, Godiva, and others. In his book Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People, Gobe explains how that human touch added to products has the greatest effect on people. Think about Apple Computer’s iMac: it simply has personality. The old Coca-Cola vending machines had this too.

There was warmth to them. It was not just a tall rectangular box keeping soda cold. It was the guy at the corner with a cooler filled with Coke.

Robert Reccord, Southern Baptist North American Mission Board president, tells me the number one purchased painter in America today is Thomas Kincaid. Why? “Because he is the painter of light, and all his pictures are that inviting come back to a more restful time, a more restful place, where the lights are on and they’re waiting for you. Quite often, his pictures depict people coming home for the holidays, people celebrating and walking the streets for whatever reason, in community.” This need for humanity in our lives is a direct result of new technologies increasing isolation. It is easy to forget there is a world outside when you can get so much through your computer screen.

Gobe asserts, “The more isolated we become the more everybody will be searching for that human touch. You can’t stop progress but now it’s changing our lives rapidly.”

He also sees our youth as big embracers of nostalgic things for two reasons. The past decade has seen the Gen X and Y populace adding their twist to the nostalgia/retro trend. A big part of their approach to the past is to use elements from different eras. “They do this to accentuate their individualism as a reaction against a cookiecutter culture of look-alike stores and products. They are also looking to rediscover elements of an America they never knew.”

Look at fashion returning to styles of the past in a world that is moving forward at a rapid rate. It eases the need-to-learn quality of other areas of our lives. When our cars and televisions become overly complicated our bell-bottom jeans make it easier to deal with those machines.