Enjoy a taste of nostalgia as we embark on a trip down memory lane and share key copywriting and content marketing lessons to help bring your business future success.

I remember the sad day my parents moved out of our childhood home. But what sticks with me the most is the day they summoned me to go through all my old stuff a few weeks before the big move.

“Sort them into keep and tip piles”, my Mum said.

The job was a lot bigger than you may expect. Despite moving out in 2010, my bedroom was like a shrine.

Football and running trophies and medals sit proudly on the shelves. Old posters and knick-knacks from my “gap yah” travels to Asia on the window sill. Cute pictures of old flames, discreetly hidden, away from prying eyes.

It was at this moment that I thought to myself:

“Bloody hell, Daryl. Do you know what this landmark emotional experience would make?”

“No, Daryl number two. Please tell me.”

“It would make a bloody brilliant topic for a blog on nostalgia marketing in February 2023.”

So, here we are, almost two years later, about to embark on a trip down memory lane.

Before the dawn of AI copywriting tools and the age of TikTok.

A time of VHS tapes, Saved By the Bell and CD albums.

A moment when Ne-Yo was so sick of love songs, Becks was on the back of every tabloid newspaper on the reg, and Will Smith was a lover, not a fighter.

Who knows, you may even learn a few lessons about your marketing along the way.

Nostalgia content marketing lessons

Big phones and small texts

Why do we feel a need to keep old mobile phones? It’s not like we’re suddenly going to fancy loading up a game of Snake or reading old text messages to childhood mates. (Ok, maybe we will.)

Yet, as I looked at my old Nokia 3210, I remembered the struggle of keeping my texts under 160 characters to avoid being charged an extra 10p.

The content marketing lesson💡

As big Willy Shakespeare once scribed, “Brevity is the soul of wit”. In layman’s terms, using fewer words to express something shows intelligence.

My content marketing lesson to you – keep things brief.

After all, the average attention span of a content consumer is less than 8 seconds!

Try to:

• Create rhythm in your writing by mixing short and long sentences
• Contract words for a conversational tone
• Use fragment sentences
• List things out for clarity (like this)

If you managed to write a declaration of love in under 160 characters to your high school boo before, you’ll be able to do the same in your marketing.

If lost, return to Ibiza

We’ve all been on party holidays. Sea, se...sandcastles and sun.  

And let’s face it, how many of the mates in the pictures from your old Fujifilm FinePix Digital Camera can you call your best friends today?

One? Two? Maybe none?

The content marketing lesson💡

Attracting new clients is an obsession. But what about your weak ties?

Your weak ties are the people at the end of your friendship list.

They're the type of people you used to go out boozing with at university or played sports together. Or perhaps you worked with them in a previous role, but you haven't chatted in a while. My point is, if you wouldn’t include them in your wedding guest list, then they qualify as a weak tie.

In marketing, strengthening the relationship with your weak ties is often underestimated. Yet, it’s the people at the end of your friendship list that are usually the ones who give you opportunities or feed your ideas.

The solution? Get active on LinkedIn. Post content, send your old acquaintances a message and comment on their posts. They already know you, so you don’t have to spend days, months or years building trust.

No Action, Man

If there was an award for the best toys I never played with, it would be my Action Man figures. Whether it was the kickboxer, army or jetpack version, Action Man figures were too bulky to throw around during playtime.

In fact, their key entertainment factor came from dressing them up or checking out their hardware. And before you try and register me as a sick toy deviant, I bet you did the same, whether it was with an Action Man figure, Barbie doll or Troll toy.    

The content marketing lesson 💡

The moral of the story here is that curiosity always prevails. Take this recent email subject line from Channel 4:

“First The Inbetweeners, now this…”

Instantly, I was intrigued.

Why? Because some clever clogs leveraged the power of a cult hit TV show I love and incentivised the click with the ellipsis. In other words, Channel4 + email subject lines = “Completed it, mate”.

So, when you’re scratching around for a subject line, a social media post hook or blog title, always remember the pulling power of Action Man’s smooth privates.

Don’t be oh so naive

Akon. The Rolling Stones. Coldplay. Bob Marley. Lighthouse Family. Aretha Franklin. Daniel Bedingfield. Prince. Michael Jackson. Hard-Fi. The Wombats. Marvin Gaye. Armand Van Helden. Tiesto. Gorillaz. The Kooks. What a weird eclectic mishmash of genres.

I used to collect CDs and cassettes like they were going out of fashion. (Which is kind of true.)

But as I tested the CDs on my old silver Panasonic stereo boombox, I was devasted to see how scratched they were.  

It turns out I didn’t put all the CDs back in their original cases. Idiot.

The content marketing lesson 💡

My feeble attempt to preserve my CDs in my moody teenage years cost me later in life. It’s a similar story when it comes to content marketing and copywriting.

Many business owners, marketers and even some copywriters are word lazy. Instead of opting for words that tell a story or evoke emotion, they use crap language which doesn’t make sense or doesn’t mean anything to the reader.

The wanky language dictionary includes:

• Innovative – Overused.
• Perfect for every occasion – Even funerals, a day at the beach or a trip to the gym?
• Hard-working – Bravo. Tell us something we didn’t already know.
• Game-changing – Is your solution really that radical?
• The best in… – Are you really?

That’s not to say you can’t use these words or phrases. But maybe try to shift the emphasis and think bolder?

There’s no substitute for Subbuteo

When I was young, I used to be obsessed with Subbuteo.

My Dad handed down all his old teams from his childhood.

Chelsea, blue. Swindon, red. Preston, white. Villa, claret and blue.

The Italia ’90 goals and picket fences.

But as I sat there on my bedroom floor assessing the state of the teams and accessories, one thing was clear to see – the quality of the old sets.

It was no coincidence that the players that looked like they’d spent 10 minutes inside a phone booth with Roy Keane were from the newer Subbuteo sets.

Somewhere between the 60s and 00s, toy manufacturers gave up on quality and cashed out.

The newer sets had cheap and tinny bases, making it almost impossible to withstand any furious flicking or pitch invasions from clumsy siblings or clean freak parents with hoovers.

The content marketing lesson💡

Anyone can write blogs or learn to set up paid social ads. But not everyone applies storytelling, emotion and experience in the content.

My advice? Don’t cut corners. Whether you’re trying to do everything yourself or using AI copywriting tools to save time, remember, there's a reason why people pay us to do what we love to do.

AI may use logic, but a human uses feeling. A great copywriter and marketing expert has priceless lived experience. They understand what works on paid ads because they've done it again and again, and they know the feeling and power of different words.

From a place of nostalgia to your business’s future

Let us tell your story for you and get it in front of the right people. Contact us today to find out more about our copywriting and content marketing services.

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Written by Daryl Charman