Is Emraan Hashmi advertising’s newest nostalgia power play?

A few months back when The Ba*ds of Bollywood was released, the multi-starrer series brought several familiar faces back into the spotlight, but the one who arguably saw the strongest cultural and commercial projection was Emraan Hashmi. Alongside a renewed fascination with Bollywood’s 2000s romance era, the actor, once widely labelled the industry’s “serial kisser", has quietly found fresh relevance in advertising.

From Foxtale to Spotify, Goibibo, and most recently Netflix, which cheekily framed Valentine’s Day as an “Emraan Hashmi Day”, the common thread has been nostalgia – often built around echoes of his Murder and Jannat era persona.

But the clustering of these campaigns raises a larger question: are brands chasing nostalgia purely for attention, or are they rediscovering a different kind of celebrity value altogether?

According to Viren Sean Noronha, co-founder of The New Thing, the recent surge in brand campaigns featuring Hashmi reflects a broader shift in how advertising interprets celebrity culture.

From credibility to culture-driven casting

Speaking about the growing wave of nostalgia-led work, he suggests the trend is less about one actor’s comeback and more about how brands are now mining pop culture for ready-made insights.

“Earlier, brands borrowed credibility from celebrities —whatever the celebrity stood for, the brand also wanted to stand for. Then in the digital era, it became about borrowing reach. Now we’re in a phase where a celebrity’s pop culture relevance itself becomes the insight,” he explains.

Increasingly, brands are building campaigns around what a celebrity is culturally trending for, rather than starting with product-first or even consumer-first insights.

Cultural memory as creative currency

From a creative storytelling lens, Gurdiksha Kaur, creative director at Kulfi Collective, the agency that conceptualised Spotify and Netflix ads, believes Hashmi represents a very specific cultural time capsule – early 2000s romance, MP3-era music discovery and pre-algorithm pop culture consumption.

“When we have discussed him for campaigns, the biggest factor has been the emotions he evokes. He becomes the vehicle – but the real value lies in the shared memories and emotional context audiences attach to that era,” she says.

The agency also notes that nostalgia works best when it acts as a gateway rather than the entire narrative.

As Nikita D'souza, VP of marketing & communications at Kulfi Collective, believes, nostalgia can pull audiences in instantly, but long-term effectiveness depends on layering fresh storytelling or cultural commentary on top.

Millennials vs Gen Z: A dual audience dynamic

D'Souza notes that many current campaigns intentionally aim to appeal to different generations. Millennials respond strongly to legacy imagery and music recalls, while Gen Z is discovering legacy stars through streaming libraries, short video formats, and meme culture.

Noronha, however, believes millennials remain the primary commercial driver. According to him, millennials are now entering peak earning years, making them highly valuable from a brand conversion standpoint.

While brands often try to add Gen Z tonality through digital formats or language, forcing youth-coded behaviour onto legacy celebrities can sometimes feel inauthentic.

Reliability and recall now rival box office pull

From an endorsement economics perspective, Darshana Bhalla, founder and CEO at D'Artist Talent Ventures, believes brands are increasingly valuing reliability and cultural familiarity alongside box office success.

While major superstars will always drive theatrical buzz, she says brands today are also prioritising predictability – proven audience recall, emotional familiarity and stable engagement patterns.

She also points out that comeback phases often create reset positioning for celebrities. This usually results in strong recall combined with renewed relevance, while pricing tends to rationalise around current performance value rather than peak stardom speculation.

“This creates a strategic window where brands get strong recall plus efficient pricing,” she adds.

Bhalla also notes that similar revival-led endorsement momentum has been seen across multiple actors, such as Bobby Deol and Saif Ali Khan, following strong content visibility or OTT-driven rediscovery, suggesting this is an ecosystem shift rather than a single-celebrity phenomenon.

In his recent slate, Emraan Hashmi has moved into more performance-led roles- from the courtroom drama Haq to the crime thriller series Taskaree: The Smuggler’s Web, while also lining up bigger commercial projects like Awarapan 2 and other action-led titles.

Is nostalgia approaching saturation?

While nostalgia-led campaigns continue to scale, industry experts warn of oversaturation risks if used without strategic relevance. Kulfi Collective believes nostalgia becomes ineffective when used purely as an attention device without a clear brand or cultural reason.

“If it’s just there to get attention, it won’t last. It needs a strong brand reason and cultural context,” says Kaur.

Noronha agrees the industry may already be nearing overuse but adds that nostalgia remains attractive because it is predictable. Reviving an iconic persona often means half the creative device is already built, making it a safer bet, especially for large marketing budgets.

"For brands, the current moment is less about revisiting the past and more about using cultural memory to build faster, sharper connections in a fragmented media world," Bhalla points out.

But there's also a broader industry concern – how success is measured. Many campaigns today are evaluated based on views, shares, and earned media value, whereas direct business impact is not always tracked with the same rigour.

According to Noronha, meme culture and short-form content consumption are pushing brands to create viral spikes rather than build long-term brand equity narratives.

Campaign bursts over long-term ambassador deals

Noronha believes most current celebrity collaborations are campaign-led rather than long-term ambassador relationships. According to him, marketing cycles today are heavily short-term and performance-driven.

“Brands want immediate returns. They want viral hits within short windows rather than committing to long-term storytelling bets,” he said.

Long-term deals, he adds, will depend on sustained cultural relevance. If cultural conversation fades, long-term brand utility becomes harder to justify.

Regarding pricing, Bhalla suggests comeback phases usually trigger rationalisation rather than sudden spikes. Pricing typically aligns with three factors: current delivery value for brands, engagement strength, and cultural relevance at the moment.

Noronha reiterates that millennials remain the core commercial engine behind nostalgia-led celebrity casting. As a high-spending cohort with strong emotional memory attachment to early pop culture, they represent efficient conversion audiences for brands.

Categories leaning into nostalgia-led marketing

Several sectors are currently leaning into nostalgia-driven storytelling – including FMCG, travel, fashion, quick commerce and OTT platforms. Streaming platforms in particular have helped sustain legacy celebrity visibility by constantly resurfacing older content and talent libraries.

Noronha believes advertising is increasingly becoming a reflection of pop culture rather than a driver of it. If pop culture does not create new iconic characters at scale, brands are likely to continue revisiting legacy ones.

Bhalla adds that evolving a celebrity beyond their peak cultural archetype requires strategic alignment between the celebrity, the management team, and brand partnerships.

As audiences rediscover the newer personal and professional dimensions of legacy stars, brand narratives can gradually expand into lifestyle, experience, and more mature storytelling spaces.