Yet Kodak Chief Branding Officer Dany Atkins sees a bright future for the company.[33] Beyond launching their magazine, in the past year, the brand relaunched their iconic Super 8 cameras, announced they would be bringing back production of their Ektachrome film for diehard enthusiasts, and partnered with fashion retailer Forever 21 to create a line of streetwear featuring the storied brand’s logo—an effort designed to appeal to teens obsessed with nostalgic 80s and 90s apparel.
“I have this ambition to return Kodak to being one of the world’s best-known, best-loved brands.” DANY ATKINS, Chief Branding Officer, Kodak
Can a brand like Kodak, regularly dismissed as a casualty of the digital revolution, make a comeback?
It can, by tapping into its most underappreciated asset: trust. People have known and trusted Kodak for a long time. For those of us who didn’t grow up digital natives, the brand is part of our history— we trusted its film to help us document our most important moments. The logo frequently appears on the back of our preserved photos from the past. It used to be printed on signs at famous landmarks, as an indication that you had made it to an ideal photo-worthy spot. Today, Kodak is trying to find a way to capitalize on that trust to make the brand more than an afterthought in our increasingly digitized world.
The reinvention of Kodak is one of an increasing range of stories of legacy brands reconnecting with their history that led us to uncover the trend of RetroTrust as a way to describe consumers’ desire to connect with brands they trust because of their long history and legacies or their personal history with them.
The Appeal of Retro Gaming
If you are on the hunt for old-school arcade machines, you can find an impressive collection at the Silverball Pinball Museum in Florida. The first time I visited on a recent trip to Del Ray Beach, I enjoyed the slightly surreal experience of playing on machines from the 60s and 70s that were older than I was. I’m not quite old enough to remember a time as a kid actually playing on pinball machines, though.
Silverball Museum - Del Ray Beach, Florida
I grew up in the 80s, when video games had just taken over from the old-school arcade machines–and it turns out that places to play these games are growing rapidly all over the world, thanks in part to the trend of RetroTrust.
Buenos Aires has seen significant growth in so-called “arcade bars,” as 30- and 40-somethings aim to reconnect with their past and play games with friends.[34] A similar growth is happening in the U.S., where these destinations are increasingly known as “barcades:”adult retro arcades that serve alcohol and food.
One of the people working to modernize these new arcade experiences without causing them to lose their charm is an entrepreneur named Tyler Bushnell. To say gaming runs in Bushnell’s blood would be an understatement. He is the son of legendary Atari cofounder Nolan Bushnell, and the cofounder of a startup, Polycade, which is introducing a retro arcade machine for the digital age.
The Polycade is the size of a small kitchen cabinet, and can be easily mounted onto a wall. Unlike current arcade machines that are heavy and difficult to move, the Polycade is much more easily transportable. And the 11 games it ships with are played on a built-in, 28-inch LCD screen. Their market, apart from trendy workplaces and well-to-do homeowners, is the increasingly popular barcades and so-called “micro-amusement parks” like Two Bit Circus, which was conveniently founded by his brother Brent Bushnell (who, predictably, was also an early customer for Polycade machines).
Bushnell’s vision of bringing back retro gaming is shared by one of the largest gaming companies in the world.
How Nintendo Mastered Nostalgia
Over the past few years, Nintendo has been tapping nostalgia for their games and consoles quite successfully. Back in 2016, the brand released their NES Classic, a gaming console with games most 40-something parents (like me!) would remember fondly from their youth. We previously wrote about this product launch in the chapter on the Truthing trend from the 2018 edition of this book, as well.
Nintendo is also leading the charge among console producers by blending the old with the new in their products—engineering RetroTrust into modern products and services. The latest, most versatile Nintendo Switch (which can be configured as a handheld mobile gaming device or as two detachable controllers for the console) has become the fastest-selling game console in U.S. history.
Earlier in the year, Nintendo released a series of cardboard kits that let kids build “accessories” for their Switch handheld console. These DIY kits—which will remind some of the model ships and planes they built in their childhood—include, for example, a motorcycle handle that allows the player to “steer” their kart in a Mario Kart game.
Nintendo DIY Kit for Nintendo Switch, 2018
With the NES Classic, as well as the Nintendo Switch and its Labo accessory kits, Nintendo is leveraging its considerable heritage as a toy and entertainment company to inspire trust in its latest gaming experiences.
In honor of the brand’s widespread popularity, the 2016 handover ceremony for the Summer Olympics from Brazil to its 2020 destination of Tokyo even included a production that involved Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dressed as the beloved Nintendo character Mario. Despite the fact that it was not an official sponsor, Nintendo was unofficially the ambassador for Japanese culture to the world–and it delighted the fans who watched the ceremony worldwide.
In the 2018 report, we also introduced a trend we called Touchworthy to describe the growing desire among consumersfor experiences they can touch and feel. In it, we cited an example of the growing popularity of familiar board games, which has continued to accelerate throughout the past year.[35]
What do these retro arcades, Nintendo’s mastery of nostalgia, and the modern resurgence of board games tell us about the world today? These shareable experiences offer a striking alternative to the physically isolating experiences of our increasingly digital lives. Returning to the games and feelings of the past offers us a way to remind ourselves of a less complicated time when it seemed easier to know who you could trust.
This is a major opportunity for older legacy brands who are being disrupted by new entrants and seeking ways to fight back. As the examples in this category illustrate, in a time when trust has become harder to earn, people are looking toward the brands they grew up with for leadership and stability. As a result, this non-obvious trend of RetroTrust could offer a roadmap back to relevance for brands, if used strategically (see later in this chapter for how to do it).
This same phenomenon is driving a desire for people to reconnect with the artisans and professionals who make the things we consume.
Why Craftsmanship Matters
The world’s best umbrella isn’t for sale at a retailer near you, and you won’t find it on Amazon. In fact, the only way to get it is to travel to a tiny workshop in Naples, Italy, where generations of craftsmen from the Talarico family have been making umbrellas for more than 150 years. Today, these legendary umbrellas are hand-carved from local Italian wood by Mario Talarico and his nephew (an apprentice), and each one takes seven hours to make. The shop only sells 220 umbrellas a year–for the surprisingly approachable price of 200 euros each.[36]
A few hours’ drive away, in the tiny Swiss town of Neuchâtel, Kari Voutilainen sits in his five-floor chateau working diligently on a watch. Voutilainen might objectively be described as the best watchmaker in the world, thanks to the many awards he’s earned at prestigious watch shows, including five top prizes at the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie Genève, the Oscars of watchmaking. He produces about 50 watches each year, has no marketing or sales staff, and his customers routinely pay anywhere from $75,000 up to half a million dollars for his creations. His customers frequently visit the workshop while he is making their watches.
“Real enthusiasts want to visit the place where their watch was made, and they want to know the person who created it,” Voutilainen told The New York Times. “It gives them a story to tell, and that’s something the
bigger brands can’t offer.[37]”
Across the world, there are craftsmen and craftswomen who, like Mario Talarico, produce beautiful artifacts steeped in deep history, tradition, and lore. Their families have been making them for generations and their long heritage has earned their work a strong reputation and the trust of customers. Other artistans are more recent entrants without deep family history, like first-generation watchmaker Voutilainen, but their process and attention to their craft offers a powerful story about a return to a time when products were handmade by someone you knew – another pathway to establishing RetroTrust.
This isn’t the same as buying something off the shelf made in a faraway factory, assembled by robots, and inspected by humans. These are products you can trust, because often, you buy them directly from the person who made them. It is also a sign of a growing backlash against the increasingly faceless shopping we do online, and a yearning for a means of shopping with personal connection built in.
Like any other artisan, Talarico’s and Voutilainen’s success are manifestations of this prediction of RetroTrust, since these craftsmen effectively leverage their brand’s history or their deep expertise to attract new customers and tell a story about the history, family, process, and quality of the products they make.
The Power of Nostalgic Entertainment
When I was younger, I used to watch He-Man, the very popular cartoon set onthe magical planet of Eternia. Every week, my brother and I would sit in front of the TV and cheer for our hero to defeat the evil Skeletor, then play with our action-figure set with the same characters.
Recently, I began watching He-Man again, this time with my kids. Like many other cartoons from the past, He-Man is back on the air, and will be coming to the big screen in a new live action movie planned for release in December 2019. (Hopefully, this movie adaption will be better than the 1987 version of Masters of the Universe, which has been suggested by some as a contender for the worst movie ever made).
The practice and pace of bringing back animated shows and movies from the past is increasing sharply. In this year alone, a live-action sitcom version of The Jetsons is coming to ABC, a reboot of the animated series Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? will stream on Netflix, and a musical adaptation of Disney’s Aladdin will be released in December 2019 with Will Smith cast in the role of Genie (made iconic by the late Robin Williams in the animated 1992 Disney version).
The factor driving this resurgence? Nostalgia. When thinking about watching a new show, it is hard to know whether it will resonate, be appropriate for your kids, or simply be worth your time and risk, given other options. Parents who grew up watching these animations remember them fondly. They are eager tointroduce them to their children and create a shared experience by watching them together—just as I did by enjoying He-Man again with my kids.
Casting in these reboots is also going retro, with actors returning to roles that made them household names decades ago. In the past year, Sir Patrick Stewart announced he would return to play the role of Captain Jean Luc Picard in a new Star Trek series. Harrison Ford has returned to several of his iconic roles, including Star Wars’ Han Solo, Indiana Jones, and Blade Runner’s Rick Deckard.
There is even a growing number of actors returning later in life to roles that made them famous long ago–like the new version of Fuller House using the kids from the original show as parents in the reboot,or former 1970s Wonder Woman Lynda Carter returning to the superhero genre as part of the cast for the new CW hit show Supergirl. In addition, the popularity of a franchiselike Jurassic Park or Toy Story continue to drive plans for new films–and this seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
Many actors are coming back to the roles (or genres) that defined them for the same reason we are seeing so many sequels and reboots of films from years (and sometimes decades) ago. In a world overwhelmed with viewing choices, people are naturally hesitant to risk trying out entirely new experiences. For those who are able to do it strategically, utilizing the non-obvious trend of RetroTrust could offer a powerful means of rising above the noiseand earning focused attention.
Why It Matters
When you look at consumers embracing retro video games and toys, reboots of older entertainment shows, or products made by real people with real craftsmanship, it’s clear we are gravitating toward products with a history, or with which we have a history. As we’ve become more skeptical of brands’ ulterior motives when they market to us, we’ve also become more uncertain about trying new things. The past we know is safe. RetroTrust is growing because putting our faith in products we recognize, or with which we have some prior experience, with helps us make decisions about what to pay attention to or buy.
This matters, both to companies with long histories and to newer ones without. For those that can leverage a legacy or tradition,storytelling is the key. Simply reprinting your logo on a product outsourced to a factory far away and offering a substandard experience will end up draining all the goodwill from that brand’s legacy. Instead, legacy companies must reconnect with the attributes people fondly recall, and offer a consistent experience that reawakens passion in customers who will remember what the brand used to stand for and come back to give it another chance.
RetroTrust can also provide great value for newer or lesser-known companies that don’t enjoy that same long legacy. Powerful storytelling can still help create innovative ways to share some aspect of the company’s offerings (such as the founder’s story) in order to create a similar emotional connection with customers.
How to Use This Trend:
Focus on the backstory–To create more trust and gener-ate attention, organizations need to share powerful stories about what they do and who does it (or did it). When we have helped leaders to become more powerful storytellers, it often involves using trends like RetroTrust to communicate with methods that are highly relatable, safe, and familiar. Beyond communications, integrating the principles of RetroTrust into product/service design can also help to create innovations that better connect with consumers and have a compelling story built in.
Seek out opportunities for collaboration–You don’t need to have the legacy and history of a brand like Nintendo in order to use this trend effectively. For younger or less-established brands, strategic partnering can offer a smart way to build upon the trust and heritage of an older brand, and the older brands can find new relevance, ideas, and energy through teaming with a younger one, as well—much like Forever 21 and Kodak coming together on their branded line of apparel.
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B2Beyond Marketing
What’s the Trend?
B2B brands use non-traditional methods to embrace their humanity and reach decision-makers along with a broader audience.
The first time I wrote about this trend, martial arts actor Jean-Claude Van Damme had just done the “epic split.” Our 2014 Trend Report had just been published, and there was something curious happening in the world of advertising.
The epic split, in case you haven’t seen it recently, is an ad for Volvo trucks that involves Van Damme standing on the rearview mirrors of two large 18-wheeler trucks. The trucks are moving in reverse on a closed track, and they slowly move apart as Van Damme does his signature center split.
When the ad first debuted during the 2014 NFL Super Bowl, people were stunned. Did they really do that? (Yes, it was real.) As a marketing professional, I was curious. Why would the trucking division of an automotive brand spend millions of dollars to show an ad for a product that the majority of the people watching the game would never purchase?
At the time, I was working at a large marketing agency called Ogilvy, and most of our clients were also in business-to-business industries. There was a standard marketing playbook that almost all of them used. Go to trade shows, publish white papers, and host client events. Each of these was highly targeted, and they worked. Most importantly, they avoided waste.
Watching Volvo promote their “dynamic steering” feature on their tr
ucks to a mass audience made no sense. Why would they intentionally waste their marketing dollars putting an ad like that on such an expensive stage?
Volvo Epic Split ad with Jean Claude Van Damme
Fixing Failing Restaurants
Around the same time that Volvo was making headlines and resurrecting Van Damme’s career, I started getting hooked on a reality TV show that seemed to be on every time I turned to the Food Network channel. The show was called Restaurant Impossible, and featured Chef Robert Irvine helping struggling restaurant owners in real time to fix their problems and renovate their restaurants.
The format of the show featured “before” stories of everything from fridges filled with rotten milk and old, brown produce to disorganized owners making convenience-store trips several times a day to pick up ingredients they failed to order in advance. Each time, as part of his process, Chef Robert transforms this dysfunctional food-ordering process by bringing in his preferred food supply partner Sysco Corporation.
Sysco is the perfect example of a dominant B2B business in its industry. Since 1970, the company has supplied food to restaurants, healthcare facilities, and other food-service providers. In 2018, the company had over $58 billion in sales, and more than 67,000 employees working to provide services to more than 600,000 customer locations around the world.
As a brand that sells directly to catering groups and restaurants, you would expect them to attend trade shows or run print ads in food industry magazines. Why would they spend the money to sponsor a mainstream Food Network show watched by millions of people who don’t own a restaurant—and probably never will?
Non-Obvious 2019- How To Predict Trends and Win The Future Page 10