The Narrative of Advertising

I now wanted to look into the narrative of advertising to see if narrative structures affect the audience and how they do.

A book called Narrative Advertising states that narrative creates a brand story that audience finds relevant to their lives and with the increasing popularity of video advertising on YouTube its enabled advertisers to develop an elaborately told story to better engage the consumer.

This information helps me because I know that if I plan a good narrative about working out and Josh I can attract people to booking a session with Josh. I can go down the line of getting the clients in the testimonials saying why they started working out and why they chose Josh and then go through some exercises where people are working hard so showing the toughness in a workout just like a video in my inspiration blog here Contextual Analysis- How to film workout promotional videos because the filmmaker gets right in the face of the man working out to show how hard work it is. I can then show the after effects of a workout so showing someone sweating like in my other inspiration blog here Contextual Analysis- Inspiration- Personal Trainer Promotional Videos because they show people breathing heavy and sweating after a session. This all tells a story how everyone goes through the same work to get fit so it may attract more people to do it because they can relate.

Here is the close up of the man working hard because you can see it in his face and this is what people can relate to.

Here is a screenshot of a promo video from my inspiration blog where they show people sweating to tell the story so people can relate.

Here is another book was written by Yilmaz again about narrative in advertisements. In this screenshot, he is speaking more about how narrative advertising and how it is often spoken about in social networks where consumers connect with each other and disclose their personal information and can deliver relevant messages to their personal contact using various applications and platforms.

This to me means that when people can relate to the narrative of a video they speak about it with their social groups online. So if I make my video relatable then people will want to book with Josh and will discuss the video with others which is all part of the engagement.

In this paragraph, it also mentions word of mouth advertising again as its saying if people can relate then they will speak about it positively which is all part of the word of mouth process that I found in this blog yesterday Driving Sales Through Video were it talks about driving sales, so it is all linked together that a good storyline, a relatable storyline can lead to sales and engagement which is why having a good narrative is important. What I am going to do now is put some of this in my contextual analysis and talk about how it has now painted a better picture in my head of what I should do for the videos.

Both of these narrative books relate to the Maslow theory that I have blogged about here Maslow Theory because it is all about how what motivates human behaviour so in this case, narrating my videos in a way that people can relate will motivate viewers to talk about it and want to book sessions with Josh.

This research also links to the uses and gratification theory in some way because it’s all about what people do with media so why people seek out the media they do, I researched into this in this blog Uses and Gratification Theory. I think people will watch my video to try and motivate themselves to workout and train so if I make my narrative relatable and focus on why people chose to workout with Josh then people may seek out training off Josh so that is why I can use some of the theory from uses and grats to try and make sure people get motivated to train through my video when they watch it and especially want to book a session with Josh.

Another theory that links to the narrative structure is the Reception Theory by Stuart Hall this is because it is all about how the producer encodes their media for viewers to decode, so for this I want to encode how much of a good trainer Josh is and show his grilling workouts so people can see he works you hard and from that I want my audience to encode this so they feel motivated and want to book a session with Josh, so that is why the reception theory links to the narrative structure of my videos.

Recep, Y., 2019. Handbook Of Research On Narrative Advertising. [online] Google Books. Available at: <https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=dJGbDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA178&dq=narrative+and+structure+of+video+advertising&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLvvudv6LoAhVpURUIHarqD4sQ6AEIKzAA#v=onepage&q=narrative%20and%20structure%20of%20video%20advertising&f=false&gt; [Accessed 18 March 2020].

Recep, Y., 2017. Narrative Advertising Models And Conceptualization In The Digital Age. [online] Google Books. Available at: <https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=cSEUDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA177&dq=narrative+and+structure+of+video+advertising&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLvvudv6LoAhVpURUIHarqD4sQ6AEIMzAB#v=onepage&q=narrative%20and%20structure%20of%20video%20advertising&f=false&gt; [Accessed 18 March 2020].