Communicating Brand Narrative
The Marriage of Entertainment and Marketing
The next frontier of brand development is just such a marriage. But the current methods of settling this frontier will never succeed. Brands are not wallpaper. Advertisers are trying too hard to make entertainment content follow conventional marketing discipline. They demand frequent brand exposure, prominent positioning, and literal integration of branded product within the content. This practice disrespects audiences, and insults their intelligence. Audiences are media savvy, and they see through such obvious abuse of editorial license.
Entertainment Content
The Abstract
A fair amount of the Legendary Brand advertising you witness is an abstraction of the brand narrative. Abstractions highlight aesthetic elements associated with the narrative: the form, palette, style, movement, conflict, or theme. An advertisement in the form of abstract representation is like an Andy Warhol painting; by itself, the subject seems very one dimensional, but the narrative influence associated with the subject gives it depth.
Fragment of an arc ad by Nike-->
This haunting commercial selected just one arc from the many stages of the hero's journey; the refusal of the call. The hero is the young girl willing to accept the call to competition, but constrained by some external force. Within each of these girls lies the power to become a hero.
The power of this advertisement is that we are watching a fragment arc sliced from the beginning of a bigger narrative. In this case, the fragment arc is extracted from one of the biggest inflection points in the narrative, the point at which the hero decides to accept the call to adventure and cross the first threshold testing their stamina.
The power of this advertisement is that we are watching a fragment arc sliced from the beginning of a bigger narrative. In this case, the fragment arc is extracted from one of the biggest inflection points in the narrative, the point at which the hero decides to accept the call to adventure and cross the first threshold testing their stamina.
8/23/2009
Brand bible worktime
Meet with your team members for 30 minutes to discuss and add to your brand bible project.
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