Narrative advertising

Narrative advertising is a type of marketing strategy that uses storytelling to influence an audience. Advertisers that employ this strategy typically try to connect their brand with consumers on an emotional level. Numerous studies—both academic and industry-based—have shown that story-driven advertising is significantly more likely to have a positive impact on consumers. Narrative advertising stands in contrast to fact-based advertising, in which a source presents what it considers to be the most relevant information to customers. For example, automakers may highlight a car’s gas mileage or run down a list of safety awards that a new model has received. The product or service can often take a background role in narrative advertising. Using the car analogy, a story-driven ad may focus on a family driving to a grandparent’s house or a school play. The idea is to connect with viewers’ emotions—perhaps reminding them of family get-togethers or time spent with their children—and have viewers extend that connection to the automaker’s products.

The story-driven approach has been used in advertising since at least the nineteenth century; however, the method truly took off with the growth of visual media in the twentieth century. Many of the most iconic ads in television history relied on narrative storytelling to make an impact on viewers. With the rise of social media in the twenty-first century, narrative advertising has expanded to include personal stories from advertisers and their employees as a new way to connect with consumers.

Overview

About ten thousand years ago, humans began shifting from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer existence to settled, agricultural-based communities. An increase in specialized societal roles was among the many profound impacts of this shift. As hunter-gatherers, all group members had to devote their efforts to finding food and helping the group survive. With people living in growing agricultural communities, only some group members were needed for farming. The rest were free to become craftspeople, blacksmiths, merchants, etc.

These early businesspeople likely used some form of verbal advertising or carved signs to promote their goods and services, but the substance of those ads remains lost. The earliest known advertisement dates back about five thousand years to ancient Egypt. A papyrus parchment asking for help finding an escaped enslaved person mentions that the man should be returned to Hapu the weaver, “where the best cloth is woven to your desires.”

In the centuries that followed, advertising was mainly displayed in public places, such as on the sides of structures. In ancient Rome, graffiti touted everything from promoting politicians to informing the public of the next gladiator games. Books were rare for much of the medieval period and had to be painstakingly copied by those educated enough to read and write. Medieval manuscripts also doubled as works of art, and skilled scribes were in high demand. Scribes often included a passage advertising their services to prospective clients in their books. For example, a thirteenth-century scribe named Herneis included a note in one of his manuscripts reminding clients, “If someone else would like such a handsome book, come and look me up in Paris, across the Notre Dame cathedral.”

Print advertising emerged in the eleventh century, when movable-type printing was first used in China. German inventor Johannes Gutenberg further revolutionized the printing press in the fifteenth century. The printing press led to the birth of newspapers and magazines in the seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century, both mediums had become popular in Europe and the American colonies. The mediums were also popular with advertisers, who used them to reach new customers. The printing press also allowed for the mass production of advertising fliers and posters.

The industrial revolution of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries created an explosion of new manufacturing across the United States and Europe. This new manufacturing, not coincidentally, led to the birth of mass advertising. The earliest advertising agencies opened in Great Britain in the late-eighteenth century, and in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. Ads for numerous products and services were printed on fliers and posters and run on the pages of the era’s newspapers.

Initially, these ads were almost always fact-based, touting a product and laying out why a consumer should be interested in purchasing it. However, as the number of products and services grew, competition between advertisers also increased. Agencies began designing ads that focused on an idea or a simple narrative image that consumers could connect to a product. Rather than telling consumers a soft drink “tastes good,” an ad could show a smiling child enjoying the drink. Others could tout the benefits of new technology, such as early refrigerators, by illustrating how they improved daily life. A now iconic advertising image from about 1900 featured a dog listening intently to a wind-up gramophone, an early record player. Coupled with the phrase, “His master’s voice,” the image told a visual story of a dog believing that his master was somehow speaking to him through the device. Numerous gramophone companies of the era used the image and the phrase, including the Victor Talking Machine Company, which eventually became RCA Records.

With the rise of radio in the 1920s and television in the 1940s and 1950s, advertising moved from a purely print format into an added dimension featuring sight and sound. While most advertising still followed a fact-based approach, these new mediums allowed for more storytelling ability, increasing the reach of narrative advertising. The use of narrative advertising began to flourish in the 1960s and 1970s, just as television advertising was entering a sort of golden age. Advertising agencies began to move away from ads that simply sold a product, instead focusing on brand marketing, emotion, and storytelling meant to connect a product to consumers on a deeper level. This time period and movement within the business was later depicted in the television series Mad Men, which aired on AMC from 2007 to 2015. The series fictionalized the world of the advertising and marketing agencies that dominated the New York City business world throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

A watershed moment in advertising came in 1971 when Coca-Cola unveiled its “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” campaign. Before this point, the company had promoted its soft drinks as refreshing and great-tasting. However, the 1971 ad featured a racially diverse group of young people standing on a hillside singing “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke.” After a decade in which racial unrest, societal turmoil, and war were common, the ad implied that people did not want to be divided along ideological lines but would rather come together as friends. Coca-Cola—a product enjoyed by millions of people all over the world—was the perfect soft drink to bring people together.

The Coca-Cola ad became one of the most famous of all time. Its storytelling was different from a typical narrative arc, but it connected with the audience by creating a message through song and visuals. In 1979, Coca-Cola again created a memorable narrative ad by building a story around star defensive player “Mean” Joe Greene of the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers. As a tired, injured Greene limps down a stadium tunnel to the locker room, a young boy offers him a Coke. Greene takes the soda and drinks it while the boy slowly walks away. Then, a seemingly re-energized Greene tosses his jersey to the boy, who exclaims, “Thanks, Mean Joe!”

Narrative advertising began to define marketing in the last decades of the twentieth century. As a result, story-based ads became more and more elaborate, even tapping into the creative powers of the film industry. During the 1984 Super Bowl, Apple hired Hollywood director Ridley Scott to direct a one-minute spot for its new Macintosh computer. The ad, titled “1984,” began in a drab, hall-like setting with a somber group of people marching in front of a large telescreen where an imposing face is giving a speech. As the figure speaks, a young woman dressed in bright colors runs through the hall, throwing a hammer against the telescreen. The screen shatters, and Apple’s message and logo take over the image. The idea behind the ad was that Apple’s new personal computer would free users from the drudgery of “big tech.” The ad was so successful it ran in its full sixty-second format just once but resulted in millions of dollars in sales for the Macintosh.

A practical reason for the proliferation of narrative advertising in the late twentieth century came about because of the changing ways people consumed entertainment. Video recording devices gave people the ability to skip through commercials, so advertisers countered by trying to make their commercials more memorable to keep people watching. As the Internet took off in the 1990s, advertisers connect consumers to their online presence as well. Many television ads began as stories, inviting users to go online to discover how the narrative concluded.

Story-based advertising grew even more prominent in the twenty-first century, as an explosion of online content and the birth of social media provided more outlets for ads and more competition for users’ attention. Narrative advertising became the norm, with story arcs and characters becoming synonymous with a company's brand and identity. For example, in the 2000s and 2010s, Dos Equis beer ran a series of ads showcasing the “Most Interesting Man in the World,” who hobnobbed with royalty and lived a life of daring adventures—and, of course, also drank the company’s beer. The GEICO insurance company introduced a group of “modern” cavemen who were always offended that their Neanderthal-level intelligence was being insulted.

The characters and storylines of narrative advertising were also used across platforms, with elements from TV commercials popping up online, on billboards, or in print advertising. Story-driven ads online became more interactive, allowing users to “like” an ad on social media and follow future versions of a storyline.

In addition, many businesses began using social media to share more personal narratives, just as many people use the platform to share their own life stories. Companies might highlight an employee’s personal story, sharing details on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram in hopes of making a connection with the audience. They may also have a team member walk viewers through their daily activities or explain the details of their job. At other times, users create the ads, sharing stories of their personal experiences with a company and its products. All these methods aim to strengthen the bond between the advertiser and the consumer.

Applications

The purpose of advertising is to convince a consumer to buy a product or a service. It is not a coincidence that the rise of narrative advertising also coincided with the widespread explosion of media and media content. With so many choices and distractions for consumers, advertisers began to draw on human psychology to create ads that instill trust, prompt decision-making, and forge a bond between product and purchaser.

Narrative advertising is a prime way to accomplish these goals. Humans have long been interested in stories and storytelling. Numerous studies have shown that the human brain is stimulated by the narrative tension, conflict, and resolution of a good story, while a poorly told story will soon lose the brain’s interest. In his 1986 book Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, cognitive psychologist Jerome Bruner claimed that the brain is twenty times more likely to remember a fact when it is presented in story form. In 2000, a study by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio and his fellow researchers at the University of Iowa, found that emotions play a significant role in decision-making. The stronger the emotional response, the more likely a person is to move toward a decision, such as a purchase. A 2016 study in Scientific Reports (Wang, Chang & Chuang) also found that commercials that combined a product with a narrative structure tended to produce a more positive response toward that product in the brain.

In addition, well-crafted stories increase engagement and trust between the storyteller and the audience. An audience interested in a story will be more likely to see the storyteller as a trusted figure. When it comes to advertising, trust is a key element of success. Consumers are by nature wary of businesses and their advertising. A 2012 study by data and marketing company Nielsen Holdings found that consumers prefer to put their trust in their friends and peers when it comes to purchasing decisions. By using storytelling to instill trust, a company can create a comfort level between the brand and the consumer. This can help them overcome the distrust between the company and consumers and can create a sense of brand loyalty.

Using social media to promote narrative advertising also helps drive purchasing among younger consumers. Several industry studies suggest that distrust of advertising is higher among younger people, with about one-third preferring personal narratives by real customers over company-produced ads. In surveys, many have also expressed a desire to buy from more socially and environmentally conscious companies. In response, many businesses have created story-based ads focusing on diversity within their ranks or the steps they take to reduce their carbon footprint.

Advertising and marketing industry studies have made numerous claims about the effectiveness of narrative advertising in driving sales. One often-cited example is from the British marketing company Headstream, which claimed that 55 percent of people who connect with a brand’s narrative advertising will buy that brand in the future, and 15 percent will make an immediate purchase.

However, as more influencers became brand ambassadors promoting products and ideas directly for companies through social media platforms, brands and ad agencies began losing control of their narratives. In 2024, the World Economic Forum named disinformation as a top global risk for companies. Companies became subject to narrative attacks, which occur when perception about a person, place or thing in the information ecosystem is manipulated by misinformation or disinformation. As a means of controling their narratives, companies began vetting and monitoring influencer content and provided more structure to product and brand placement.

About the Author

Richard Sheposh graduated from Penn State University in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and journalism. He spent twenty-three years working in the newspaper industry as a writer and an editor before entering the educational publishing business.

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