For Brands, The 1950s Are Back. Here's Why.

Feeling a wee bit nostalgic lately? You’re not alone. Over the past year in netnographic research we’ve been conducting for brands, we’ve noted a shift in online discussions across subreddits, Discords and other channels, to a preference for more nostalgic elements in brands. From colours to creative elements.

This is a cultural signal brands need to pay attention to. And not just CPG products and B2C companies. Technology companies should take note. Especially those in the AI space. There’s a reason Anthropic is the most trusted LLM (AI) brand out there and they intentionally chose a 1950s palette for their brand elements.

Recent research is showing that 75% of consumers are more likely to buy when ads evoke nostalgia. And 70% of consumers say nostalgia makes brands feel more authentic. 62% say nostalgic content feels more comforting. In our research, we found 73.4% of consumers preferred warmer words and tones in marketing content. The signals are glaringly loud. If one listens.

So what’s happening? Consumers are choosing a return to warmth. In a way, this is about emotional regulation at scale. Millions of people are doing this and it started around late 2024. This isn’t noise, this is a cultural signal.

Consumers are emoting this way for a few reasons based on our research. The rising cost of living, job insecurity, divisive politics, AI everywhere leading to technological overwhelm, shifting geopolitics and future uncertainty.

So why the 1950s aesthetic then? It was a decade filled with optimism, of rebuilding after a global war. A time when we felt we controlled technology. That we had agency. Radio and TV we’re coming on the scene, rock n roll was becoming popular. Jobs were plentiful, incomes were rising. Everything was attainable. No, it wasn’t perfect, not all was good.

We’ve noted in our research that discussions tend to use a lot of memory and nostalgic references to a time gone by. People felt that era was comfortable, easier, adventurous, warm. When we look at discussions around major brand identities that have shifted to bold but cold colours and flattened out, we see words and terms that signal less consumer trust, coldness and a feeling of disconnect.

The 1950s was the last time technology was an additive rather than an extractive. Radio brought the warmth of voices to the home and music, people gathered in homes to listen to radio shows. They could take radio with them in the car. But radio and TV didn’t demand anything back. No notifications. No attention economy. No technology they didn’t understand being thrust into everything.

In large part, this desire for nostalgia, the idea of the 1950s as this ideal decade (that no one wants to actually return to) is, we think, a cultural immune response.

Cold, clean and flat brand elements may be appealing in board rooms, not so much to the consumer. We call the stripping of logos down to minimalism “blanding” where one can’t distinguish between a tech company and a family restaurant. So what we’re seeing is the crystallisation of a new sort of oppositional structure; warm/cold as shorthand for human/machine. The 1950’s palette is is a visual vocabulary for the warm side of this binary.

Consumers are renegotiating cultural capital. “Warm” aesthetics signal authenticity, genuiness in a world saturated with algorithmically optimized coldness. Today, nostalgia isn’t sentiment, it’s strategy. If your logo could exist on a hospital wall or a banking app without anyone noticing, you’ve optimised for invisibility. For blanding.

Humans create value through social relationships, not transactions. The cold tech aesthetic signals transaction; efficiency, scale, conversion. The warm analog aesthetic signals relationship; craft, care, presence. Consumers aren't rejecting technology. They're rejecting transactional aesthetics.

In times of stability we kind of like novelty and boldness. In unstable times, such as now, we’re drawn to familiarity. Brand science knows that warm colours activate feelings of safety and demanding of less vigilance.

As things are likely to stay unstable around the world for a wee bit longer, consider nostalgia in your campaign strategies, product design elements and creative. You're not selling products. You're selling feelings about products. And right now, the feeling people will pay for is safe. Not excited. Not impressed. Safe. That has aesthetic implications most brands have yet to truly confront.