The 80s as brand strategy

A new book by journalist David Sirota makes the case that the political and cultural references from the 1980s have not only become cool again, but may be a way to explain our present-day thinking. Turning a time period into a distinct brand seems common today — think Gen X— but it was a new marketing innovation back in the 1980s, as Carolyn Kitch, a professor of journalism at Temple, found in her 2003 study of mass-circulation magazines. According to Kitch, generational labeling is "primarily a phenomena of the last quarter of the 20th century" and it began as an early-1980s ad strategy aimed at selling products to Baby Boomers and their parents.
March 14, 2011 | CNN