nostalgia is the new innovation

there's a phrase that didn't exist two years ago and now gets used to sink entire ad campaigns. ai slop. it's shorthand for content that's obviously ai-made and obviously not good. technically polished but hollow. nothing that feels like a person actually made it.

here’s the origin story of the phrase that took less than twelve months to become an insult everyone instantly understood. mcdonald's netherlands released an ai-generated christmas ad in december. it lasted three days on youtube before comments got turned off, then the video got delisted entirely. people called it "ai slop" almost immediately and the phrase stuck.

meanwhile, a different kind of ad was landing. brands leaning old-school - toys back in cereal boxes (well done, kellogs!), throwback campaigns built around songs everyone half-remembers (dove going full pussycat dolls), were the ones people actually wanted to watch.

when nostalgia starts doing the work

here's the uncomfortable bit for anyone who spent the last two years chasing "cutting edge": nostalgia is winning because it's the one thing a machine can't fake convincingly. ai can render a flawless truck with wheels that actually spin. it cannot manufacture the feeling where a song you haven't heard in fifteen years comes on and your whole body remembers where you were.

and the numbers agree. nostalgic ads test higher on enjoyability, higher on distinctiveness and amazon found campaigns leaning on it can push purchase intent up by as much as 60%. people are deciding to buy things because something reminded them of being twelve. which says less about the 90s and more about memory being the one thing you can't prompt your way to.

nostalgia you never actually lived

it gets more interesting too.

81% of gen z say they like it when brands revive stuff from their childhood. except a lot of them weren't around for the thing being revived. they never owned a tamagotchi, never saw a flip phone in person. they're nostalgic for an era they only know secondhand, which researchers have started calling "borrowed nostalgia."

not everyone's doing this well, though. disney's live-action remakes are a punching bag for exactly this reason. moana came back less than a decade after the original and people weren't feeling nostalgic, they were feeling milked. no anniversary, no reason, just "remember this thing" stretched to fill a release slot.

maybe looking back is the new forward

so if the last two years were spent proving how ai-forward a brand could look, 2026 is quietly proving the opposite works better. memory, timing and a person behind the work who actually felt something before asking you to. the most futuristic move a brand can make right now might just be looking back.