Brand Storytelling: A Review of the Interdisciplinary Literature
The power of digital technologies and social media has transformed the way brands talk to their customers. Contemporary marketing is less about the products we make and the services we offer, but more about the experiences brands create, giving customers
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Brand Storytelling: A Review of the Interdisciplinary Literature
Abstract The power of digital technologies and social media has transformed the way brands talk to their customers. Contemporary marketing is less about the products we make and the services we offer, but more about the experiences brands create, giving customers numerous stories to tell. This chapter presents a critical review of the interdisciplinary theories of storytelling drawing on narrative philosophy, consumer psychology, research in branding and tourism. While covering the essential elements of a story, it also highlights the shift from predictable bowling to pinball wizardry due to the rapid advancement of digital technology and proliferation of social media in all aspects of our lives. The chapter also draws on the neuroscience’s perspective of how the brain responses to storytelling and reviews different approaches to brand research with associated brand storytelling. Keywords Interdisciplinary research · Essential story elements · Narrative transportation · Experiential outcome · Moral sense making · Brain’s response to storytelling
Storytelling, known as an ancient art (Gallo 2016; Krevolin 2016), is a powerful social phenomenon and one of the oldest forms of communication (Kaufman 2003; Worth 2008). Since storytelling is in their DNA (McKee and Gerace 2018), human beings are natural storytellers
© The Author(s) 2020 S M A Moin, Brand Storytelling in the Digital Age, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59085-7_2
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(Niles 1999); also known as “homo narrans” (Lund et al. 2018), which refers to “storytelling human”. Even in the religious scriptures, including the Qur’an and the Bible, there are many stories told in the words of God. The Qur’an mentions that Almighty God has created human beings and taught them how to narrate stories: “has created man, and has taught him articulate speech” (Qur’an 55: 3–4). Here, man refers to human beings at large. Over the period, this ancient art has become an essential part of human nature. Serving as an “emotional glue” (Krevolin 2016, p. 74), storytelling differentiates human beings from all other species, giving them incredible power to connect emotionally and foster cooperation (Papadatos 2006). Storytelling has attracted the attention of the marketing researchers for its astonishing power of persuasion (Garmston 2019; Krevolin 2016), covering the areas marketing strategy and tactics, brand philosophy (McKee and Gerace 2018), consumer psychology, and behaviour (Woodside et al. 2007, 2008; Woodside 2010). It also extensively covers the areas of branding, advertising, and sales (McKee and Gerace 2018) including brand promotion, product placement, and the relationship between customers and brands (Woodside 2010), brand DNA (Krevolin 2016), and brand storytelling (McKee and Gerace 2018; Aaker 2018). However, there has been a paradigm shift in the way storytelling has shaped marketing communications, brand marketing, and how marketing views storytelling in the modern-day. The dominant
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