Nostalgia Marketing, Millennials, and the Ghostbusters 2020 Remake

Children of the 1980s, a group that consists largely of people who would grow up to become millennials, the tech-savvy, hopelessly broken generation that still lives with their parents, are known in marketing circles for their emotional attachment to certain products.

And it's not hard to see why. Millennials, that is, people born between 1981 and 1996, lived through almost every stage of some technologies and pop-culture phenomena, from vinyl records to MP3s (and back to vinyl again) to every since-remade Stephen King movie.


Inevitably, companies have tried to tap into that particular quirk of millennial purchasing. Nostalgia or emotion-based marketing, works for the same reason that major brands arguing with each other on Twitter does - it makes an otherwise faceless entity seem more human.

Creating campaigns that offer millennials a window into easier, happier times fosters a relationship between customer and brand. It's personalization without the requirement for anyone's personal data, the corporate equivalent of sitting around a campfire talking about your favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

So, after the 80s-themed Stranger Things, new releases from the Rambo, Robocop, Terminator, and Star Wars franchises, is it really a surprise to see beloved spookfest Ghostbusters make a return to the silver screen?

Set for release in 2020, the sequel to Ghostbusters I and II will see the surviving members of the 1984 movie, including Sigourney Weaver, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Ernie Hudson, reprise their roles as New York's oddest emergency service.


Let's be honest: the Ghostbusters franchise hasn't done brilliantly lately, much like many of the other 80s and 90s movies to recently emerge from their respective cocoons.

After the death of Harold Ramis, the group's Egon Spengler, in 2014, the all-female reboot released two years later was divisive for all of the wrong reasons and failed to make its budget back. Similarly, the video game released in 2016, a twin-stick shooter, was described as "deplorable" by Polygon. The latter case is something of an oddity though, as Ghostbusters games often review well.

The IGT-developed Ghostbusters slot machine at Play OJO casino, for instance, earned praise for including more special features than any other slot game online, helping it stand alongside the 2009 Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which was nominated for four professional accolades, including three at the Spike Video Games Awards.


Despite the presence of the original cast, the upcoming Ghostbusters movie doesn't seem to have fallen into the trap of paying too much fan service to long-time followers, a trait that may help it stand apart from the unpopular 2016 effort. 

While details are sketchy, it looks like the lead cast will be played by some combination of Antman's Paul Rudd, Mckenna Grace, Logan Kim, Finn Wolfhard, and Carrie Coon. It will also pay tribute in some way to Ramis, and may include the actor's in-universe family.

The new movie will be released on July 10 2020, some 35 years after the franchise's first appearance in cinemas in the December of 1984. If there's one thing else for sure about this new addition to the Ghostbusters' universe, it's that its millennial fans are getting old.