More rosy than it really was?

Ah, remember when we all used to be into nostalgia?

Want to know a company that's amazing at nostalgia? McDonald’s.

Once you see how effectively McDonald’s leverages nostalgia in its marketing, it’s almost impossible to unsee it.

Cases in point:

• Last year, McDonald’s ran a 30-market campaign where it flipped the “M” in its name upside down to become a “W,” thus bringing to life the “WcDonald’s” restaurant that is an ongoing feature in anime films and TV shows. (If you don’t know it, you’re probably not part of the Millennial and Gen Z audience McDonald’s was going for here.)

• Remember adult Happy Meals? If you went back and looked at the very first lines of the announcement of that promotion in 2024, McDonald’s wasted no time in zeroing right in on the emotional reactions they tried to spark with that marketing strategy. (“Happy Meal toys … unlock core memories around some of our favorite McDonald’s moments.”)

• And, there’s my favorite example of them all: the McDonald’s Grandma McFlurry.

What does a McFlurry have to do with your grandmother? Almost nothing that I can tell.

But, McDonald’s added “chopped, crunchy candy pieces (like grandma’s favorite treat that she hid in her purse!)” to a regular McFlurry, and built an entire marketing campaign around trying to make people think of their grandmas.

‘Sitting down with my family’

Other restaurant chains are now apparently beginning to see the value, too.

According to a recent report in the New York Times, some Generation Z diners have a similar nostalgic connection to casual dining restaurants — a different category than quick service restaurants like McDonald’s — namely places like Chili’s, Rainforest Cafe, California Pizza Kitchen, and Carrabba’s Italian Grill.

While it seems like this might be a bit less of a concerted effort on the part of these brands to attract younger diners so far, and more of a naturally occurring emotional phenomenon, it also seems like a heck of an opportunity.

I’m a bit older than Gen Z, so I’ll take them at their word. But, members of that generation quoted by the Times apparently have warm and fuzzy memories of places like Outback Steakhouse.

As one 27-year-old said — conjuring recollections of “eating the bread … and sitting down with my family.”

Chain Fest

Additional anecdotal proof cited in the article: the fact that 25,000 people wound up on a wait list for “Chain Fest” last October, a festival featuring “gourmet versions of iconic Chain dishes.”

Partners for that included: Cracker Barrel, Johnny Rockets, Panda Express — and Pepto Bismol.

Also, Volkswagen. I’m not sure what they had to do with chain restaurants, but my guess is that they’re more interested in reaching Gen Z car-buyers, which was in fact the sweet spot demographic for Chain Fest LA, along with a similar event that attracted 10,000 people in New York.

It could be a big deal for these restaurants, which have generally seen declining customer bases compared to their lower-cost competitors.

The nature of nostalgia

Psychology suggests nostalgia is a powerful defense against unhappiness. One study found:

Provoking nostalgia in experiments strengthened people's social bonds, boosted their positive feelings about themselves, and improved their mood.

And, a group of scientists wrote in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience in 2023 that they were optimistic about exploring "nostalgia-based therapy and treatment" to counteract "emotional and memory dysfunctions."

That's all in the future, which is ironic for a newsletter about nostalgia.

But having studied this for a while, I’ve concluded that there’s a small trick and a big trick with nostalgia marketing.

• The small trick is that you have to find a history rooted deeply enough that people remember it — or at least, think they remember it.

• The big trick is realizing that people don’t actually remember things accurately, so there might be ways to leverage nostalgia even if your company hasn’t been around that long.

As Ana Babic Rosario, a marketing professor at the University of Denver explained, nostalgia amounts to “emotional time travel. … We tend to crave some of those nostalgic moments because we think they’re more stable. That’s how our mind tends to remember the past — more rosy than it really was.”

Aww, wouldn’t grandma like that?

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7 other things worth knowing today

• The world’s economic capital stands to have a democratic socialist at the helm. The significance of an apparent Zohran Mamdani victory over former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is a seismic moment that signals how much of an insurgent posture Democrats are in at the moment. The election isn't a done-deal however; even as Mamdani takes the primary, current Mayor Eric Adams is running as an indpendent, Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa is the Republican nominee, and Cuomo hasn't ruled out running a third-party bid as well. (Time)

• The Trump administration on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against all 15 federal judges in Maryland over an order blocking the immediate deportation of migrants challenging their removals, ratcheting up a fight with the federal judiciary over President Donald Trump’s executive powers. “It’s extraordinary,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Maryland. (AP, Court Listener)

• The Washington Post plans to begin inviting some people quoted in its stories to annotate articles they appeared in. The Post will vet their remarks for accuracy and fairness, and the publication said it also might withhold comments that violated rules against defamatory or obscene submissions. (The New York Times)

• A New Orleans family says they are in disbelief after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained 64-year-old Mandonna Kashanian, an Iranian-born woman who has lived in the United States for 47 years. Family members say she was in the U.S. on a student visa before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and has been in the country under a stay of deportation for decades. Her daughter, Kaitlynn Milne, said the arrest happened within 60 seconds while she and her father, Kashanian’s husband of 35 years, were inside the home, unaware. (Fox 8 Live New Orleans)

• Pizza places near the Pentagon got a spike in business over this past week of international warfare – and a social media account may have actually predicted the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites as a result. PenPizzaReport‘s account is dedicated to “open-source tracking of pizza spot activity around the Pentagon (and other places).” (Eater)

• The people who clean up TikTok are starting to fight back: Content moderators say they’re exposed to graphic violence, psychological trauma, and union-busting tactics, and now a larger movement is brewing. (Rest of World)

• After teasing a potential sequel to his Oscar-winning drama The Social Network for years, Aaron Sorkin looks to have found an angle to tackle for his follow-up film. Sources tell Deadline that Sorkin has been set to direct The Social Network Part II for Sony Pictures. It’s not a straight sequel but rather a follow-up to the original movie that explored the origins of what would become the world’s biggest social media platform. (Deadline)

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Thanks for reading. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.