Storytelling in advertising and branding

Abstract

Information communication technologies accelerated numerous trends in the world including the shift to online communication and further content digitalization. Technological innovations reverberate throughout complex social and demographic trends which make a significant impact on business, international companies including. The article focuses on linguistic analysis of the current changes in advertising and branding, mainly in the fashion industry. COVID-19 pandemic with online communication and remote work contributed to further transformation of choice, preferences, and options as well as to popularity of social media as an instrument of information search, as the environment for communication and sharing opinions. Lockdowns and quarantines during COVID-19 pandemic, lack of direct contact with clients entailed the shift to online marketing and advertising. Looking for effective online marketing instruments some companies select storytelling as a basis for their videos. Underpinned theoretically by multimodal discourse analysis and narrative studies, this paper shows how storytelling with its appeal to emotions and memorability potential is becoming a noticeable marketing trend and advertising strategy against the background of current radical technological changes in the information abundant world. Companies manufacturing lux products began to diversify marketing strategies and generate multimodal narrative – a string of stories about the brand, its founders, technologies they use. COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the shift to multimodal videos. During COVID-19 pandemic, fashion houses created marketing masterpieces to attract attention to new collections. They replaced traditional physical shows and set a new perspective for online fashion shows. These short films telling brand stories become chapters of a brand’s lookbook available in social media.