While I travel abroad, I like to keep in touch with everything happening back home, and around the world. It helps you stay informed.

Besides, there’s no excuse when you have the worlds knowledge in your pocket.

Just this week at the Electronics Entertainment Expo (a.k.a. E3), Square Onyx announced that they are releasing a new video game for PlayStation 4, Final Fantasy 7.

But it’s not new.

Final Fantasy 7 (FF7) was released in the 90’s to the great-grandfather of PlayStation 4 (that’s PlayStation 1 for the genealogically challenged).

So why are people getting emotional about a remake? It’s the same thing with a new skin. And why did the reskin of an old game with the same story overshadow announcements of brand new games at E3?

It’s popular not because it looks nicer with high-def graphics, but because it speaks to people’s nostalgia. FF7 is something people are familiar with, about a period of time when they were blown away, and one they want to re-live in hopes of getting that old familiar feeling again.

It’s feeding someone something they are familiar with, to reinforce a previous moment of awe or value.

It’s nostalgia marketing.

What does this mean to content marketers?

It means you can reuse your old content.

You can recycle, rehash, remake, and update anything you’ve created in the past to use again. That’s not the same as duplicating old content, but if you improve on it or give it a twist, you’ll find that people will still enjoy it even if they know the ending or have read it before.

We rewatch our favorite movies not because we forgot how it ended but because it was enjoyable.

Movie studios and comics take nostalgia marketing to the extreme. Just look up how many Batman movies have ever been made or how many times Captain America was killed off and brought back.

You can also rehash and expand on content other people have created, within ethical and moral reason of course.

Take record artists for example, they often make covers for popular songs or remix parts of older songs into their own. There are always going to be a group of purists who would disagree with any changes you make to the original, but overall it’s well received by the majority. And you have to ask yourself, are you targeting the minority or the majority?

Content marketing isn’t just about creating original content that your audience has never seen before.

It’s ok.

It’s ok to not have original content.

If we were only limited to original content, there would be significantly less content being shared everyday.

Try this: for a week, track informational blogs or articles you’re reading in a list. Make sure to include what the big takeaway is, and when it was written. At the end of the week, go through that list and Google for a similar lesson posted at an earlier date. How many of your weekly reading was “original” knowledge? I’ll bet you the core lesson has been taught years prior.

Most of what you read has been said a million times before, its 90% the same.

There are also people out there who just haven’t seen the original version. For me, I’ve never played the original Final Fantasy 7 and if I were to start, I’d start with the new one.

To most people, rehashed content is interesting content that they would read, experience, and share for the first time. Afterall, the world is a big place.

Takeaway

Nostalgia marketing is about reinforcing what your audience already knows, but in a newer and fresher perspective. The best part is 90% of the work has already been done already: the message is mostly the same, people are interested in the topic, no research required, etc. You just need to tweak it a bit and boom, “fresh” content.

Also, I didn’t come up with the term Nostalgia Marketing so this isn’t an original idea.