We read about this somewhere and thought we should ask our Wizard with Words to share his wisdom. And it speaks a lot for someone who has over five decades of experience, that he doesn’t live in the past. Here’s Dr Bhaskar Das in the June 28 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. Some global brands are said to be looking to the future by taking inspiration from their archives by reviving old slogans, jingles or logos. Anything from India that you would like to see re-emerge?
A. ‘Thanda matlab Coca-Cola’ or ‘There is nothing official about it’ are memorable taglines of two different brands that created a rage at their relevant time. If they are revived today, will they be equality successful is the million dollar question. I am not a representative sample of various consumer cohorts that have been evolving as tribals of shared interests and perspectives.
Let’s get back to the core logic of why even the thought of reviving old slogans has come up. I think nostalgia is comforting to a set of consumer class who feel unnerved by the breakneck speed of changes that we are experiencing in every facet of life and can’t always decode its meaning. Nostalgia engenders a cocooned feeling that the future is a continuation of the past. But a major flaw in the axiom is whether the nostalgia will work for the new cohort of consumers.
I wonder if there has been a famine of creative ideation for a brand. In a sense brand is like a human being which also evolves over time. The core appeal need not get diluted but the rendition can get contemporised. That’s easier said than done, because the value systems across Generation X, Y, millennials and Z, are no longer homogenous. And creating a universal brand appeal that cuts across generations of attitudinal cohorts may be a challenging task. If one goes through the history book of revival of nostalgia through memorable communication taglines, I don’t remember anyone. In fact, the list of failures come more to my mind than successes. You may have to correct me.