Are nostalgic ads working on Gen Z?

Nostalgia is advertising’s favourite currency these days. As we explored in our previous piece, brands from CRED to Paperboat have long used childhood cues and retro storytelling to drive recall and emotional connection. Globally, too, the trend is everywhere. Gap’s recent campaign brought back Kelis’ 2003 hit Milkshake, Dior and Balenciaga are reworking Y2K fashion, and on TikTok, nostalgia-themed content has clocked over 16.4 million posts.

However, nostalgia doesn’t resonate in the same way for every generation. Millennials may feel it through Doordarshan evenings or 90s Bollywood jingles, but as a 26-year-old Gen Z, nostalgia for me isn’t about rotary phones or black-and-white ads. It’s Channel V shows, Balaji Chips packets from the school canteen, Nataraj pencils, Facebook’s early meme pages, and secretly downloading music off illegal sites.

For others my age, it takes a slightly different shape. For Shraddha Panday, Creative and Founding Member, The New Thing, it’s “butterfly clips, Karan Johar movies, Hannah Montana, the shift from Facebook to Instagram and Hippo Chips.” For Priya P, Senior Content Lead at Lesssgo, nostalgia is more about revisiting her school days, “covering books in brown paper, showing off fancy gel pens, and the absolute chaos of annual day rehearsals.”

Put together, this is Gen Z’s nostalgia. Not black-and-white ads or 90s jingles, but the early 2000s and the internet-adjacent chaos that shaped how we grew up.

Why brands keep getting Gen Z nostalgia wrong

When you look at how brands in India use nostalgia, it’s a whole different story. Most campaigns lean into millennial or even Gen X memories. Think of Bisleri’s recent ad that revived the 1950s aesthetic of romance, or Swiggy’s ad featuring Karisma Kapoor dancing to Sona Kitna Sona Haifrom the 90s, or even CRED’s ads featuring Govinda, Bappi Lahiri, or Madhuri Dixit. These clearly land for people who lived through those eras, but for Gen Z, they hit differently.

As Vyom Bhatia, Founder of marty martin, plainly put it, “It’s not relatable for me.” Panday adds, “The 90s aren’t relatable, they are aspirational.”

And that’s really the tension at the heart of it. Gen Z didn’t grow up with Zeenat Aman’s disco era or Karisma Kapoor’s Dil Toh Pagal Hai phase. We caught those in reruns or on YouTube, not in real time. If you were born in the late 90s or early 2000s, your first real, vivid memories came somewhere between 2005 and 2010.

Manav Parekh, Executive Vice President, Creative at Only Much Louder, frames this gap neatly. “There are two audiences. The ones who lived it and feel the rush. And the ones who did not but love the vibe anyway. Both end up emotionally hooked. The risk comes when the reference is too niche. If you only speak to one slice of the audience, you shut everyone else out. The best work makes nostalgia inclusive.”

This is where Indian brands often miss the mark by defaulting to millennial nostalgia instead of Gen Z’s lived cultural memory.

First-hand vs. second-hand nostalgia

Psychologists describe nostalgia as an emotion tied to belonging and self-continuity. But for Gen Z, that split takes two distinct shapes: first-hand and second-hand nostalgia.

First-hand nostalgia:tied to personal, lived memories. It’s the smell of Maggi on a rainy day, the jingle to Doremon or Sinchan, the familiarity of visiting your nani’s house in summer vacation. 

Second-hand nostalgia:shaped by reruns. Listening to your older sibling’s playlist, a rerun of a '90s movie on a Sunday afternoon. These are things that they have not lived through, but something they have borrowed as an aesthetic. 

As Shraddha Panday explains, “If you lived it, nostalgia is a memory trigger. A doorway to how you felt. If you didn’t, it’s simply an aesthetic… Gen Z doesn’t ‘miss’ the 90s. They’re seeing it for the first time. They wear it, perform it, aspire to it.”

That’s exactly why things like wired earphones, butterfly clips, or even VHS-style Instagram filters trend on social media. These aren’t objects of memory for us; they are props for a performance of a past we never lived. 

Priya P puts it simply, “For someone who actually lived through an era, nostalgia feels personal because it is tied to real memories and moments… For someone who did not live it, it is more about enjoying the vibe and style from a distance.”

Saurabh Pandey, Account Manager, PR & Corporate Communications at White Rivers Media, expands on this difference, “If you lived it, nostalgia is muscle memory — you feel it instantly. For secondhand nostalgia, it’s more curiosity and ‘I wish I’d been there’ than true emotional recall.” He adds that direct experience carries depth and immediacy, while secondhand nostalgia is filtered through cultural narratives, which shape how authentic or intense the connection feels.

When nostalgia works for Gen Z

At first glance, it’s easy to say nostalgia doesn’t really land with Gen Z. After all, most of us didn’t live through the '90s cultural markers that brands keep pulling back.

The truth is, nostalgia does trigger reactions in Gen Z, but how it works for us looks different.

Vyom Bhatia points out, “The person who hasn’t lived the experience, but yearns to, is an easy target for nostalgic campaigns. They will buy the product purely out of wanting to live that life. A person who has lived the experience first-hand is much more likely not to buy into nostalgia.”

That’s why Gen Z, despite being ‘chronically online’, still responds to nostalgic content. But the most successful examples aren’t pure throwbacks; they’re remixes.

Boldfit recently tapped into early-2000s Indian daily soap-style storytelling for a sexual wellness product. And Hocco Foods used throwback content to promote their products. Neither campaign was about reliving the past; they were about sparking a sense of familiarity and collective memory.

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That’s why, for Gen Z, it is thetype of nostalgia that matters. Shraddha Panday explains that Gen Z’s relationship with nostalgia comes from a unique media shift. “Before the late 2010s, Gen Z had a common diet of films, music, and mass-market products. Then, our media atomised. Suddenly, there was no ‘one thing’ we all consumed together. So, it’s no surprise we go back to the ’00s and ’10s to find references that bring comfort and that lost sense of community. Nostalgia is a cheat code for unity.”

This is exactly what Prime Video’s Woh Wala Feature did. The ad reintroduced classic comedy characters from Suniel Shetty and Rajpal Yadav films, but filtered them through today’s distribution channels, creators, with Dharna and MC Stan. It wasn’t just nostalgia; it was a remix. 

Parekh adds that this craving is not accidental, “We are all running low on comfort right now. Nostalgia is the reset button. It is familiar, safe, and instantly lifts the mood. Between money worries, global drama, and AI giving everyone a headache, life feels too loud. Nostalgia is the shortcut.”

This is why Y2K aesthetics, MSN Messenger typography, or even Cartoon Network reruns have resurfaced globally — they act as markers of “shared culture” in a fragmented media landscape.

Globally, too, we see this pattern. Amazon revived its 1999 “Sweatermen” campaign with a retro touch to it. Amid the vintage setting, smartphones stand out as the link to today, showing how online shopping connects the past with the present.

McDonald’s Grimace’s Birthday paired a purple shake with an 8‑bit game, turning nostalgia into viral content on TikTok. Netflix’s Stranger Things sparked a global 80s revival, even pushing Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” back into the charts.

This is why Y2K aesthetics, MSN Messenger typography, or even Cartoon Network reruns have resurfaced globally, they act as markers of “shared culture” in a fragmented media landscape.

American Gen Z thrives on “newstalgia” (modern remakes of old IPs like Barbie or Spider-Man) while Korean Gen Z consumes retro 2000s aesthetics through K-pop styling. Indian Gen Z is no different; nostalgia works when it reconnects us with a collective timeline that feels like ours.

Parekh says, “Nostalgia travels well across age groups. Even if you were not there, you can still connect with the feeling. Millennials bring both the money and the appetite for ‘remember when’ moments, and Gen Z is right behind them. The risk comes when the reference is too niche. If you only speak to one slice of the audience, you shut everyone else out.” 

If there’s one thing this conversation makes clear, it’s that nostalgia isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula. What works for millennials won’t automatically work for Gen Z.

For brands, the opportunity lies in treating nostalgia less like a throwback and more like a remix. A memory is powerful, but an aesthetic is flexible — it can be dressed up, reinterpreted, and made aspirational.

Because in the end, Gen Z doesn’t just want to relive the past. We want to reshape it, remix it, and claim it as our own.