Nostalgia: Why should marketers care about it?

James Clear's best selling book Atomic Habits outlines a beautifully simple way to change our personal behaviours by making incremental changes to our lifestyles. James Clear's best selling book Atomic Habits outlines a beautifully simple way to change our personal behaviours by making incremental changes to our lifestyles. One of the key lessons is the idea that small changes make a big difference. In life we often look for the game-changing moment or a short-cut hack. Atomic Habits are the small changes we can make that are known as the concept of marginal-gains, seeking small 1% improvements. Seemingly tiny increments have a major impact over time: 1% a day equates to a 37% improvement in a year. In marketing we are often looking for the single big event to make a difference. The game-changing next big thing. Quite often that comes in the form of a stunt brief - the quest for an idea that will grab the headlines and change the world. Go visit FamousCampaigns.com and ask yourself how many have you heard of? Are they actually famous? At Finn we advocate an atomic habits style approach for brands: define what you want to be and then make incremental steps to get there. Continuously test and learn, observe what the data are telling you and make small improvements. We have just deployed that approach for one of our clients and they have grown brand penetration a ridiculous 318% to become the number one in their category. Now to be clear that is mostly due to it being a brilliant product, perfectly positioned to capture unmet demand and it has grown a ton of distribution thanks to the herculean efforts of the sales team. However, a disciplined approach to delivering effective communications has made a significant and proven impact. Silver bullets and big bets are not healthy habits for brands.