PHD Perspectives: Experiments in Nostalgia - Kelsey-Lee LeGassick - MediaBizBloggers

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As digital continues to redefine how consumers create, share and validate, there's been an interesting trend in how traditional/nostalgic pieces of work are being digitally re-imagined. Undergoing experiments in nostalgia, consumers are revamping classic characters and stories in new ways in order to translate morals from aged, well-known tales into digital language for today's audiences.

With digital, users can easily take apart and put back together pieces of classic movies. A mash-up video of Disney's Mary Poppinsdoes just that. Viewers can re-witness and rediscover parts of their childhoods through digital eyes.

Another example of this fusion between digital and classic is in Coldplay's Life in Technicolor video, in which band mates become puppets and play to an audience of awed children and parents. In this scenario, the band takes the form of the iconic puppets Punch and Judy.

One of the most interesting digital reinventions comes in the form of Alicein Wonderland.Both Tim Burton's anticipated remake of the film and a mash-up video of the film illustrate the journey of discovering and sorting our many digital identities.

Like Alice, who exclaims, "I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then," in this digital wonderland one struggles to answer the question, "Who in the world am I?" Caught in a bit of an identity crisis, consumers have become spliced across so many digital channels that they often have trouble recognizing themselves.

According to Iconoculture, "Consumers are increasingly exploring and discovering multiple identities virtual and physical as they maintain an ever-widening number of separate selves that all connect back to one fragmented, evolving me." There are so many digital outlets for expression – video, photo, social networks, blogs, microblogs, mobile apps – that it becomes impossibly difficult to manage where one's digital identities within these fields stand alone and where they merge and create hybrid channel identities. People ask themselves, should I only tweet stories relevant to my work or career? Should my Facebook be just for friends or coworkers as well? I have three different blogs, so how do I distribute appropriate content and still manage to be "me?" At what point do I overwhelm my networks with repetition and duplication of thoughts? One must ask where various digital identities overlap, and how they weave together to write the story of who we are.

Experiencing classic stories in a digital environment jump-starts the digital acculturation process. Digital is its own unique language, so it therefore has its own unique culture – a way to experience and tell stories. The stories, characters and places of one's childhood are a part of what gives people a feeling of belonging – to family, friends, groups, etc. There's a sort of confusion and disassociation when one finds the icons of one's childhood in a digital landscape, a place so unexpected.

So, when digital disrupts seemingly unchangeable classics, consumers challenge what it means for something to be iconic, what it means to create something original and what it means to identify with themselves as well as others. Acculturating into digital, consumers perform "digital experiments" on the classics of their first language in order to understand how to adapt to the culture of the digital world.

Brands and agencies must acknowledge the presence of these multiple personalities and recognize the acculturation process consumers are currently experiencing. Even as media practitioners, we had better learn to let go of our "media speak" in favor of the digital language while exploring the digital world. We need to define our own process of acculturation into the digital world and understand the importance of digitally characterizing and dimensionalizing our identities.

Kelsey-Lee LeGassick is a research analyst at PHD Media, an Omnicom company. You can follow PHD at http://twitter.com/PHDisSmartMedia

Read all Kelsey's MediaBizBloggers commentaries at PHD Perspectives - MediaBizBloggers.