Future Nowstalgia

If you are anything like me, you spend a significant amount of time each December watching the apex of the sporting calendar, the PDC World Darts Championship taking place at Alexandra Palace. This year’s Championship had a thrilling dénouement with 17-year-old Luke “The Nuke” Littler dismantling Michael “MVG” van Gerwen in the final with frightening ease, a feat made all the more impressive when you take into account MVG’s pedigree as the second most successful player in PDC history.

However, as much as I would enjoy analysing Luke’s fondness for the double 10, what I am instead going to discuss is something that caught my eye as part of the overall spectacle at “The Darts”. International followers of the arrows may have been baffled to see a middle-aged man belt out a version of Labi Siffre’s “(Something Inside) So Strong” to a reaction from the increasingly feral audience that would bring to mind a reformed Beatles dueting with Jesus Christ himself. What is it about Shaun Williamson doing (albeit very competent) karaoke that turns him into a sort of Taylor Swift for lads dressed as minions covered in Madri?

For this, you need to understand that Williamson got his big break as the hapless Barry Evans in long running soap opera Eastenders. His character was mostly treated as a complete loser, and indeed met a singularly depressing end as his character, pushed over a cliff by his newly married wife who’d just told him how she loathed him and only was interested in his money. After this ignominious exit there was a perception that he was typecast, and he played off this perception in an inspired turn as a down-on-his-luck version of himself in Extras playing “Barry Off Eastenders”. From this, he leveraged a second career as this version of himself, and inexplicably found himself being booked to sing at the World Indoor Bowls championship. This unexpected turn inspired a renewed interest in Shaun, and a career as a host of “Barrioke”, a singalong hosted by the eponymous Barry Off Eastenders, leading us to 2024, where he performs to raptures from the audience.

But why am I, four paragraphs into this post, talking about Shaun Williamson singing at the PDC? The success of Barrioke, and his star turns at various public events have a post-ironic nostalgia to thank in no small part. People are delighted and comforted by memories from their past, but dining out purely on the name recognition of the past is not enough. LinkedIn recently published 25 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2025 which included suggested that ‘brands will lean into “nowstalgia”’ as one of its key trends. Much like Barry from Eastenders, brands will need to recontextualise their name recognition for a newer generation.

In recent years we’ve seen the reintroduction of classic brands like Viennetta and Furby and even brands revisiting old classics like Pepsi’s nod to its 90s logo. It stands to reason; in difficult times, we reach for comforts and the brands we associate with our youth and better times can be key. However without bringing them into the now, and making them fit for purpose in an entirely different social, cultural and political landscape, will mean that they flounder.