Nostalgia is everywhere in marketing today. Legacy fonts, throwback packaging, retro tech revivals, all deployed with the hope that sentimentality alone can stir emotion and move product.

But here’s the problem: nostalgia is novelty, and novelty, by definition, doesn’t last.

It’s seductive. It gets clicks. It’s emotionally charged, delivering a quick dopamine hit. And let’s be real, it’s easy. But slapping an old label on a can isn’t strategy. When brands engage nostalgia at a surface level, they often do more harm than good.

Take Coca-Cola’s recent Diet Cherry Coke revival. It was cool for a week, but, for me, it lacked any meaningful connection to what the brand has stood for across decades. It missed the opportunity to ask: What did this product mean to people then? What does it mean

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