"DE VILLE JU VÄCKA KÄNSLOR, JA, OCH DET FUNKADE”. En kvalitativ studie om visuell storytelling ur ett mottagarperspektiv

Abstract

In a constantly and rapidly developing world where the environment, human rights and inclusivity has become more important topics on the agenda than ever before, companies have had to adapt their marketing strategies to fit society's new expectations and standards. This has led to a shift in focus – from directly selling a product to now selling a brand. To do this, companies and communicators have developed new and evolved ways to create feelings, attract attention and to position their brands in the desired way. One of the most popular strategies that has emerged to successfully do so is called visual storytelling – a strategic combination of narratives and visuals that - put together – can create positive and memorable feelings toward a brand. In this study we examine how visual storytelling as a marketing strategy is perceived by the recipient. To explore this, we composed three different focus groups in varying age spans who we all showed Nikes video-advertisement “Find your greatness – jogger" and thereafter conducted qualitative interviews. We have chosen to proceed from the recipients' perspective since a majority of previous research on the frontier is based on a transmitter perspective. The chosen field of research for this essay is PR – public relations, in which visual storytelling is a well-known and effective marketing strategy for branding. The results of this study are in line with previous research on visual communication. This study shows that the investigated respondents mainly search for and think in narrative structures and supports the theory that schema incongruities can in some cases be effective in attracting attention. The result also shows that dynamic factors in the video advertisement attract the respondents' attention. Among other things, the focus groups were interested in objects that facilitate their ability to draw connections between the visuals and the narrative but also to their own reality. Furthermore, the respondents' answers present scattered opinions between the age groups regarding the attitude towards visual storytelling as a form of communication, but otherwise the study present no major differences between the ages.