We recently sat down with Forbes’ staff reporter Megan Poinski to talk about why brand history matters and the recent release of our report, “The Heritage Gap.” Check out our conversation below.
Link to original article available here.
History Factory’s Adrian Gianforti And Erin Narloch, Along With Certus Insights’ Andrew Rugg, Speak To The Power Of Nostalgia On The Heels Of Their Recent Study.
Brand history is more important than people might think. History Factory, which helps companies keep track of their past, partnered with Certus Insights on a study that quantifies how consumers and employees feel about brand history—something 54% said they want to see more of. I talked to Director of Marketing & Communications Adrian Gianforti and Senior Director, Business Insight and Performance Erin Narloch, both from the History Factory, and Certus Insights President Andrew Rugg about the study.
This conversation was edited for length, clarity and continuity. It was excerpted in the Forbes CMO newsletter.
Why is brand history so important on so many levels and with so many people?
Narloch: I like to think of brand history as evidence of the investment brands have made over time. In itself as this repository of experiences, it is a place where you can connect to past innovation that is evidence of a brand’s footprint throughout time. It can be utilized in a variety of ways. We see a lot happening in product development and innovation, in internal communications, but also external marketing. This study we did taps into not only the appetite of consumers for history and heritage content, but the willingness for the availability of things that have already been produced, stories that they can tell.
Gianforti: The thing that we lean into a lot with our clients is that your story is uniquely yours. It’s for you to differentiate right out of the gate, by looking to your past, and specifically your timeline and that curated story over time to show that history of innovation. That’s what we find to be really advantageous for brands to lean into.
Why is it that more brands don’t take advantage of leaning on their history, posting their heritage and nostalgic content online?
Narloch: Sometimes I think it could be they don’t know how to position their history. When we talk about history, it’s oftentimes, ‘Oh, it’s the past. I don’t know any company that only looks backward.’
We at History Factory have a mantra: Start with the future and work back. I think it’s having an understanding of where the brand wants to go, and where its strategy is taking them—and looking for proof points throughout time that reinforce that positioning and that North Star. It reinforces that direction. It’s where memory and imagination come together.
I would say [not leaning into history is] sometimes societal misconceptions of what history can do for you, and it’s the nuance of position[ing] it in order to be that future focused, future leaning, reinforcing values, reinforcing brand narratives that brands struggle with.
Gianforti: It legitimizes some of the strategy and policies you put in place, even if they may be “new” to existing workforces. I would argue that a lot of workforces since the pandemic are also relatively new. I can’t tell you how many times we hear from prospects that their staff is only [there] 10 years, or four years and under. They really have no sense of where the company came from and what they’ve accomplished over time.
The other thing is I think a lot of companies are reconciling with histories that maybe aren’t up to today’s ethics and standards. There’s something there that they need to grapple with, and perhaps the reaction is to avoid it. In our case, we think that it’s important to acknowledge it, then be able to take from those learnings and challenges, and press on and move forward. We did find in our study that consumers are looking for companies to be open about their history, good, bad or indifferent.
Do you think part of it is maybe companies don’t realize the types of conclusions that you came to in your study, that this really is something that consumers care about, that job applicants care about, that people who are looking at a company truly care about?
Gianforti: I think it’s something that maybe hasn’t been top of mind. I think you’ll find that this type of marketing has always been in existence. It just seems to be having more of a moment as of the last year or so. There’s a lot more thought leadership being developed around the idea of: What if we brought back old IP, old characters, old stories from our past and really leveraged that in our marketing. Like Gen Zers are craving information from the pre-internet age. I think a lot of brands are leaning into that concept of them trying to pull on that idea. It is the same way that I really love Paul Simon, but I wasn’t exactly alive during his heyday. I think it is a ‘history repeats itself’ kind of opportunity for brands to think about.
Rugg: The data shows there’s clearly some appetite for consumers when it comes to this stuff. There were some brands that actually did talk about their history and heritage on the social media platforms. When they did, they were adopting it into their overall brand identity and brand strategy. Microsoft is one example of somebody who’s using nostalgia to be kind of playful and fun on some of the social media posts, and that fits into a larger strategy.
Brands may dismiss it and they may not know how to implement it with their current strategy, but that kind of undergirds not seeing the full value of focusing on past successes as an indication of where these companies want to go in the future. You have these companies that are very future focused, but there’s this reservoir of content and indications that they know how to point the way towards the future. There’s opportunities there.
Is this consumer desire for historical and nostalgic content an always thing, or is it especially a right now sort of thing?
Rugg: We know the numbers are strong, but what I think was surprising for me at the very least is when it comes to brands wanting to talk about the history, you’d think older generations would want this. But it turns out that younger generations too had an appetite for it. It seems at the very least there’s a consistent desire, and at the very least that there isn’t some sort of vast chasm of appetite for this amongst the younger generations. Whether or not that’s ebbed and flowed over time, we just don’t necessarily have the data points to support that. But at the very least, generationally, we see it continuing as people kind of age up—obviously it gets a little bit stronger as you age—but it’s still there when people are younger.
Narloch: Nostalgia in general, while we’re talking about it more and more in the last few years, I would say that the appetite to remix or reference the past has been documented at least since the mid-1970s as a marketing tactic. We’re also at an interesting touch point, where we have a generational cohort like the “geriatric Millennials.” This before and after PCs and internet and all of the technology advancement, I think has provided us with a desire to share some nostalgic memories. And an interest to younger generations trying to grasp and have an understanding of what things were like pre-TikTok and Instagram and social media.
How can a brand both be looking back and honoring its history and heritage, but still be forward looking?
Rugg: What I found in looking through a lot of these brand social media posts is it’s laddering up to values. Like IBM trying to establish a history of innovation from the space programs to today, and trying to advance the idea that there’s something intrinsic in their culture and as a company that they’ve been able to do this, and they point the way towards continu[ing] to do this. The same goes with some car companies, like BMW and Mercedes-Benz, pointing to their history of innovation and then continuing forward into the future.
It creates a solid foundation of which to springboard messaging on because there’s additional substance behind it. But it comes back to the kind of laddering on technologies. Even in the case of Microsoft, they’re very much trying to lean into the fact that Microsoft products are a way to entertain, have fun, experience joy, et cetera, and they point to nostalgia posts as a way to undergird that.
Gianforti: The data that I found particularly interesting was around the employee side of things. I was pleased to see that they were so in favor of their companies sharing their history with them. Resoundingly they want to hear more about the history to create a better work environment, to tackle challenges more readily and have that transparency with their employers. We are finding more and more that the external marketing efforts of a CMO have to do with employees as much as they do customers. That information was really telling: Employees are just as much a consumer of the brands that they work at as someone who’s a regular customer.
Is there anything that makes it easier or harder for some brands? Your study gives Disney high marks for tapping into history, but that has been in Disney’s brand since the beginning. Meanwhile, Oracle is cited for having zero nostalgia posts.
Narloch: I think there’s opportunity for any age of a company, as well as the type of industry, from entertainment to technology solutions. It goes back to understanding what a company might have in their history inventory, and what have they done and produced over time. That’s from products to campaigns to initiatives. The body of work they have to utilize, and how they can leverage it to reinforce where they’re going. Is there a humble beginning that they can talk about their origin story?
There are many different ways. It does require knowing what you have, and sometimes that doesn’t exist. Disney [as] an example, they’ve built upon memory, they’ve built upon character about shared experience. But that’s not to say that someone working at Oracle years ago wouldn’t have a shared experience with a colleague. What is the history—knowing—and then the heritage—the curation and the leveraging.
Rugg: I feel like a lot of these companies are struggling with this idea of what is their identity online. That’s a bigger question. It feeds into how they present history and heritage as well. How disciplined do they need to be in their messaging and what they’re presenting online? Does it need to be purely future-focused? Does posting history and heritage content come with the degradation of them being future-focused? I think some of the more successful companies are fine with: here are the primary values, the primary messages, the primary things that we want to say.
But there are some other additional proof points or additional sub messages that we can advance. One of which is we have a history of doing things, we have a heritage in doing these things and it ladders up. There’s a diversity of content and it speaks a little bit in terms of what audience they’re trying to reach.
One of the things that stood out to me in the survey results is even 10, 15 years ago, I don’t know if the average consumer would be as sophisticated in discussing the idea of brand in the survey. That idea has become much more ingrained in our culture. I think consumers are thinking about brands, and a lot of these companies are slow to acknowledge that their consumer base is sophisticated enough to handle a multiplicity of messages for them to incorporate history and heritage in what they’re discussing.
For companies that may have less-than-stellar pasts, what are ways that they can lean into their history and nostalgia and still be on the right side of today’s consumer?
Gianforti: You want to acknowledge what we call shortcomings of a company’s history, and then be able to be aware of it so that they can address it, should the instance come up that they have to speak on it. Consumers appreciate that “We screwed up” conversation. This is how we’ve corrected it and moved forward and put guardrails in place to prevent something like this from happening again. And we are growing as a result. There’s not many 100+ year old companies that don’t have some indiscretions in their past that they haven’t reconciled with, and their CEOs have to take accountability for that today, even though they weren’t alive then.
It’s kind of boring to have a client that doesn’t have some things in their past that shows challenges and overcoming and coming out on the other side. We celebrate those things as a way for us to work with our clients on how you move forward.
Narloch: History isn’t new. It’s happened. It’s out there. It’s better that they know and they’re aware so they can speak. So they don’t have part of their story interpreted or presented by somebody else, they should really understand the completeness of it.
Rugg: Why is the history important to the brand? Is it about innovation? Innovation throughout history, regardless of when it happened, is important. That element of framing their past in terms of what it says about the company and what it does, without trying to hide anything, is a recipe for success. You had BMW talking about cars that it made in the 1930s online, and we didn’t see any major backlash on those posts.
Companies shouldn’t be afraid, and acknowledging what about their past is important. And you create those two things together. I think you have a recipe for, dare I say, a semi-mature online conversation about these things.
What kind of advice would you give to a CMO of a company that has not really been leaning into their history?
Narloch: Begin to know what you have. Begin to understand the impact of the story, the history that your brand, your company, regardless of age has. And then look at reviewing that history, reviewing that story. Look at the key messages you’re going after, your target audiences. Wherever you might be going in your plan, see if there’s some amplification points where you can leverage and utilize points that reinforce the messaging, reinforce where you’re going as a brand today.
And ask for help. Do they have a historian on staff? Do they have an archivist? Is there a tenured employee that they can tap and learn from and be a student of their own story, their own company story?
Rugg: A lot of these companies develop very thorough and thoughtful campaign strategies: what messages they want to advance, what target audiences do they want, what platforms they want to be. Then they align in making sure that they’re consistent across that messaging. Then they’re disciplined and everything works together.
But what they should be doing is asking an additional question when they determine what their campaign strategy and messaging is: What have we done in the past that helps show that we can do this, or that supports this messaging. Even that additional question helps begin a process of talking to people who would know. If they have an archivist on staff or people who have been there for a long time. Beginning to understand that there is a way to talk about the past that helps align with the current campaign strategy that could go a long way and be, if not a component of any sort of campaign, a prominent feature.
Gianforti: The advantage of being a younger company is that more than likely the founding partners are probably still alive, and that’s not something that everyone has in some of these older companies. Being able to record that oral history of those individuals I think is really important, and it’s something that they can do tomorrow. We’ve seen older brands over time lean into the context of how they got started. The AI boom is a great example of this. There’s going to come a day where AI and ChatGPT are probably going to sound pretty archaic. Paying attention to what you have now can only make you more successful in the future.
Megan Poinski is a staff writer at Forbes writing the C-Suite newsletters. Previously, she was a reporter at Industry Dive covering CPG food and beverage and technology in the space. She has also worked as a homepage editor at The Washington Post and was a reporter at The Virgin Islands Daily News.