What is it about the past that makes us feel so comfortable?

I’ll often find myself sitting in the office or at my desk, staring out the window down Market Street or up Regent Street in Wollongong.

I grew up here, so this area is extremely familiar to me. Our office is actually the scene of so many of my childhood memories. It's where the Bevans Real Estate offices came and went. It’s where my dad worked. I’d come here after school and spin around in the chairs. Make paperclip chains so long I could dangle them out the window to the pavement.

I’m not sure what it is, but I have been finding myself going back to those little places in my memory more often than usual. Maybe it's because Christmas is around the corner, or the warmer weather of summer causing this sensation, but I find great comfort in thinking about things from the past.

I think we all do.

A friend and mentor of mine, Ben Rennie, wrote a blog about old movies.

About how films from his childhood and younger years have helped him to connect with his kids (well, that’s what pulled me in but really the article is about a cultural phenomenon designated The New Nostalgia).

In an episode of Mad Men, advertising antihero Don Draper talks about an old Greek copywriter named Teddy.

Teddy taught him that the most powerful thing in advertising is nostalgia. The etymology of the word harking back to ancient Greece, meaning “the pain from an old wound”.

Lately, when I see kids out and about, they are dressed in baggy jeans. Jorts are in. Sunglasses reminiscent of Arnettes. And how could we ignore the iconic silhouettes of Adidas Sambas and Gazelles.

We all want to go back.

Even the ones that weren’t there.

For brands with longer histories than Beans, there is an enormous opportunity.

When the world is cold and complicated, are we going back to the places and things that we enjoyed in simpler times?

The New Nostalgia suggests we long for the days when the most pressing thing we had to do was beat Dr Neo Cortex in Crash Bandicoot, yet we access and enjoy this feeling via the incredible technologies all around us.

It’s like a wooden iPhone. All the bells and whistles of the world’s most advanced scientific advances, wrapped in the emotional support of Cheese TV.

There are a host of content creators across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube who orbit exclusively around nostalgic niches. Video gamers. Baseball card collectors. Movie buffs.

What is it about the past that makes us feel so comfortable?

Brands like sunscreen cool kids Standard Procedure have harnessed this aesthetic and used it to establish themselves in a market place once ruled by businesses that, when you think about it, are truly nostalgic.

As Ben’s blog details, this trend represents an interesting time and opportunity for businesses to use the burgeoning advance of technology in tandem with themes, styles, tones and stories reminiscent of the past.

With fond memories comes trust. We take solitude in knowing that the business we've worked with has been around a long time, and that they're not going away. But that begs the question, where are you going?

At Beans, we've had the privilege of working with businesses that started long before I was making paper clip chains. Glennos, with a strong local history in civil construction, trusted us to bring their brand into a new era - but really we were just telling a story from the past. And showing how it's still relevant today.

Allen Price, who have been shaping the South Coast for generations - and perhaps have an even more significant role in its future - are gearing up for their next stage of growth with a name that they had on the door over seven decades ago.

If your business has a history, how are you harnessing this story into the future?

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