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Part V. Digital Media and Storytelling in University Courses | 159
current values of the company, and their critical reflections. In an ideal
organization, employees collectively shape the identity of the firm instead of
being controlled by the board (Moss, 2017). The use of DST can contribute
to the creation of this common identity. In Koh’s experiment, the use of DST
fostered self-confidence in employees who rarely talked about themselves. At
the same time, business employees learned how to communicate meaningfully
and effectively in a narrative structure. DST has also been used in workshops
in Singapore in the areas of brand dissemination and the improvement of
elevator pitch speeches (Koh, 2017).
Companies not only promote their products in a narrative structure
for outside sales but also aim to influence decision makers and investors.
Narrative structure helps to convey the point through synthesis, supporting
verbal information with music or images. The use of data-driven storytelling
is an effective tool for presenting market research findings, and business
students would greatly benefit from incorporating this complex form of data
visualization into their training. At the same time, learning the rhetorical
turns of narrative can also be useful for future business professionals.
Including narratives in presentations, analyses and research reports is not
only persuasive, but also increases audience engagement and encourages
purchase.
In such a narrative, the context of the story is the current state of the market,
which determines the storyworld. The narrative can reveal demographic
profiles and transport trends of well-defined groups of characters whose
relationships to each other can be depicted episodically; the narrative can
then be brought to a close with a complex conclusion. The protagonist is the
client, the consumer, whose best friend is the service or product, while the
antagonist is the challenge which the product or service helps to overcome
(John, 2022).
Ihe structure of external promotions is informed by market research,
the primary aim of which is to assess the target groups attitudes and value
preferences toward services and products. In the first stage of brand design,
researchers use narrative interviews to uncover consumer stories and
experiences that influence customers to purchase a product or service. The
interviewees also reveal their purchasing motivations and the meanings that
they attribute to the product. Based on these interviews, further advertising
narratives are created that are perceived as authentic by consumers, and
thus facilitate their identification with the product (Andreasen, 1985, Mick
& Buhl, 1992; cf. Mitev, 2015).
In storytelling marketing, narratives are used to present common sense or
nostalgic experiences related to a brand or product. A storytelling promotion
can be an entire narrative (e.g., when a housewife tries a variety of washing
powders but none of them wash her clothes to her satisfaction except the
advertised product), or it can be based on a single scene in which a mood is
associated with a product (e.g., an advertisement showing the steaming of