Storytelling as a Means of Brand Building - Building Authenticity and Emotions through Brand Stories

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Volume Title

School of Business | Master's thesis

Date

2020

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Corporate Communication

Language

en

Pages

97

Series

Abstract

The objective of the study was to examine the arguments and benefits of storytelling in brand building, as well as explore the role of building authenticity and emotions through brand stories. The research project was implemented by examining four relatively small Finnish companies that cleverly exploit brand stories in different ways in their communication. Due to lack of previous research on the topic, the scope of the study was chosen to be from the company perspective. The study aimed to answer the following research questions: (1) How do small Finnish companies brand and differentiate themselves by creating “authentic” brand stories? (2) How is emotional branding exploited in these brand stories? (3) Why is storytelling viewed important? The research methods of the study consisted of a semi-structured reflective interview as well as analysis on the sample companies’ websites and Instagram accounts. As an analysis method, thematic analysis was used to make sense of the collected data that included four interviews that were transcribed into a written form, together with the seven pages of notes concerning the companies’ websites, as well as the analysis of the 100 Instagram posts along with the analysis of the “Instagram Stories” from two weeks. Color-coding was utilized in order to identify repeating themes, similarities and differences, as well as naturally occurring transitions. It could be concluded that the main findings of this graduate thesis are threefold. Firstly, five different themes (truthful brand story, real people, honesty and transparency, use of humor, and Finnishness) could be identified, through which small Finnish companies brand and differentiate themselves by creating authentic brand stories. Secondly, emotional branding is exploited by aiming to create (predetermined) emotions by appealing to consumers’ emotions together with promoting the company values. Thirdly, storytelling is viewed important, as it is a core of these companies differentiating them from their competitors by substantially increasing their brand awareness.

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Thesis advisor

Eräranta, Kirsi

Keywords

storytelling, brand authenticity, emotional branding, international business communication, branding, brand story, authenticity

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