Eye-tracking data shows how nostalgic stories unlock brand memory

Consumers often stand in store aisles scanning rows of products, trying to retrieve a specific name from their memory. Companies invest heavily to ensure their brand is the one that comes to mind during these moments. While marketers frequently use sentimental imagery to make advertisements more persuasive, the question remains whether these emotional appeals actually help people remember the brand name later.

A study published in the journal Psychology & Marketing investigated this dynamic. The research examined whether ads that trigger personal memories are more effective at securing brand name recall than ads that rely on facts and figures.

Defining the Memory Gap

Psychology of Selling

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Dieter Thoma and Jessica Koziak from the Department of Psycholinguistics at the University of Mannheim in Germany led this investigation. They identified a specific gap in current marketing knowledge. Previous research established that nostalgic advertising often creates positive feelings and can increase an intent to purchase. However, it was not fully understood if these ads actually help a consumer retrieve a brand name from memory after a delay.

To understand their approach, one must first distinguish between two types of memory. Semantic memory stores factual knowledge, such as a brand’s slogan or the year a company was founded. Episodic, or autobiographical, memory stores personal experiences, such as the memory of eating a specific candy bar after a childhood soccer game. The researchers sought to determine if tapping into that personal, autobiographical system creates a stronger path to retrieving a brand name than simply reinforcing semantic facts.

Setting the Stage for Experimentation

The team designed a series of three experiments to test their theory. They proposed that nostalgic ads would act as a key that unlocks autobiographical memories. They theorized that this process would create additional mental pathways to the brand name, making it easier to recall later.

For their materials, they selected brands likely to be familiar to their participants from childhood or adolescence. These included items from categories like food, drinks, toys, and school supplies. For each brand, they created two versions of an advertisement. The “factual-semantic” version presented a narrative about the company’s history or product specifications. The “nostalgic-autobiographical” version told a story designed to evoke childhood experiences and feelings associated with the product.

Study 1: Measuring Recall and Relevance

The first experiment was conducted online with 102 adults aged 21 to 35. The researchers wanted to see if the ad style affected recall and if the participant’s existing history with the brand played a role. Participants first rated their current knowledge and personal emotional connection to a list of 16 brands. This step established a baseline for how strong their “prior memories” were.

Next, the participants read the advertisements. Some saw the factual versions, while others saw the nostalgic versions. After reading, they rated their memory intensity again to see if the ad had successfully reactivated those thoughts. About a week later, the researchers contacted the participants for a surprise test. They asked the participants to type out every brand name they could remember from the session.

The Role of Prior Connection

The analysis of the first study revealed a nuanced result. Simply using a nostalgic ad did not automatically guarantee better recall for every brand. The effectiveness depended heavily on the participant’s prior relationship with the product.

For brands where the participant had weak prior memories, the nostalgic approach provided no significant advantage over the factual approach. However, for brands that the participants already remembered strongly, the nostalgic ads significantly outperformed the factual ones. The data showed that when a consumer already holds a personal piece of history with a brand, a nostalgic ad triggers that memory. This activation creates a chain reaction that leads to higher recall rates days later.

Study 2: Physiological Evidence

The researchers sought to validate these findings with objective biological data in a second experiment. They recruited 47 young adults for a laboratory session using eye-tracking technology. This time, the advertisements were audio recordings rather than text. Participants listened to the 30-second narratives while looking at a blank screen with a simple fixation cross.

The researchers measured two specific ocular responses. First, they tracked pupil dilation. The pupil often expands when a person experiences emotional arousal. Second, they measured saccadic eye movements, or the number of times the eyes shifted fixation. In the context of listening to audio, more frequent eye movements can indicate that a person is visualizing mental imagery vividly.

Biological Responses to Nostalgia

The eye-tracking data provided physical evidence of the internal memory process. When participants listened to nostalgic ads for brands they knew well, their pupils dilated significantly more than when they listened to factual ads. This indicated a higher level of emotional engagement.

Simultaneously, the fixation data showed that participants moved their eyes more frequently during the nostalgic ads for familiar brands. This suggests they were constructing vivid mental images of their past experiences. The recall test administered three days later confirmed the pattern found in the first study. The brands that triggered these physiological signs of vivid, emotional memory were the ones participants successfully recalled.

Study 3: Testing Across Generations

The final experiment addressed the variable of age. Marketing theory often suggests that older consumers rely more on autobiographical memory than younger consumers. To test this, the researchers recruited two distinct groups: 37 younger adults (ages 20-35) and 38 older adults (ages 65-85).

To ensure the test was fair, the researchers tailored the brand lists. The younger group saw brands relevant to the early 2000s. The older group was exposed to brands that would have been popular during their own youth and adolescence. This adjustment ensured that both groups had the potential to experience genuine nostalgia.

Universal Effects of Nostalgia

The results challenged the assumption that age serves as a primary driver for nostalgic effectiveness. Both the younger and older groups responded similarly to the advertisements.

The analysis showed that nostalgic ads improved brand name recall for both generations, provided the participants had strong prior memories of the brand. The mechanism appeared consistent regardless of age. When the ad content aligned with the consumer’s actual past, it successfully reactivated autobiographical memories. This reactivation was linked to a significantly higher likelihood of recalling the name a week later.

Implications for Business Strategy

These findings offer specific direction for marketing professionals. The data indicates that nostalgia is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It is a specialized tool that functions best when applied to brands with which consumers have an established history.

Marketers attempting to launch a new product or build awareness for an unfamiliar brand may not find success with nostalgic narratives. The study suggests that factual advertising may be equally or more effective in those scenarios, as there are no personal memories to reactivate.

However, for established legacy brands, the implications are distinct. Campaigns that utilize sensory cues—such as music, visual styles, or narratives from a specific era—can be highly effective. These cues help consumers unlock existing memory traces. This process does more than create a warm feeling. It physically reinforces the presence of the brand name in the consumer’s mind.

Aligning Content with Experience

The study also highlights the importance of targeting. The success of the third experiment relied on matching the brands and the narratives to the correct generation. A nostalgic ad intended for a Baby Boomer will likely fail to trigger the necessary memory retrieval in a Gen Z consumer, and vice versa. Marketers must ensure the “nostalgic” era depicted actually aligns with the formative years of their target audience.

Directions for Future Inquiry

This research opens several new questions for the field. The current study was conducted in controlled environments where participants focused entirely on the ads. Future research might investigate how these ads perform in real-world environments full of distractions, such as social media feeds or busy public spaces.

Additionally, the study relied on unaided recall, which is a difficult memory task. Researchers could explore whether nostalgic ads also improve brand recognition, which is the ability to identify a brand when seeing it on a shelf. Finally, further investigation could determine if there is a saturation point where too much nostalgia becomes ineffective or if the effect persists over longer periods than just a week. The current work establishes that memory is not merely a filing cabinet of facts but a dynamic system where personal history drives retention.