Being a parent carries the unexpected bonus of your kids constantly making you feel old. On a recent Friday night, I got a surprising proposition that made me laugh: “I wish we could go back in time so we could go to a video rental store.”

Decades ago, I spent plenty of Friday nights wandering the aisles of video stores, smelling stale popcorn in the air and wishing people would return “The Sixth Sense.” But nostalgia targeted at my kids highlighted the fun part of the rental store: Laughing about movies with friends, the always-on new releases playing in the store, and employees who had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of cinema.

Nostalgia for the ‘80s and ‘90s is alive and well in many people who never lived in those decades, and that can be an important marketing tool. I talked to Nicole Stetter, head of social at creative agency Saylor, about how to use nostalgia from the end of the 20th century to market to Gen Z today. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

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What’s more American than a family road trip, especially one celebrating the country’s history and natural wonders for its 250th birthday? While these are great ideals, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s just-announced online “Great American Roadtrip” video series is hitting some sour notes with the public.

Duffy, a multimillionaire former star of MTV reality shows “The Real World” and “Road Rules: All Stars,” spent seven months hitting the road with his family—nine children and his wife, Fox News host and former reality TV costar Rachel Campos-Duffy—while still running the Transportation Department. Critics say Duffy’s long family vacation may have pulled him away from his actual job too much, and that ordinary Americans cannot afford summer road trips as gas prices surge due to the Iran war.

The transportation secretary maintains that taxpayers did not fund the trip. And he’s right—the money came from an independent non-profit organization called Great American Road Trip Inc., Forbes’ Kyle Khan-Mullins writes. This group, set up last summer by former GM and U.S. Travel Association lobbyist Tori Barnes, gets its funds from large companies overseen by the DOT, including Boeing, Toyota, Shell, Royal Caribbean, Enterprise and United Airlines.

A pitch deck obtained by Politico mentions sponsorship tiers for the show of up to $1 million. And even in the trailer released this week, the corporate logos are apparent. At the........

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