The Use of Narrative Paradigm Theory in Assessing Audience Value Conflict in Image Advertising

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of an image advertisement using techniques developed from Narrative Paradigm Theory. It is suggested that the nature of postmodern culture makes image advertising an appropriate external communication strategy for generating stakeholder loyalty. A content analysis of Exxon’s “Driver Human” campaign’s introductory television advertisement was performed to explore potential sources of rational and value-laden audience conflicts. Two random samples, one advertising professionals and one upper-division undergraduate business students, participated in this study. Analysis suggests that, used in advance of traditional audience testing, Narrative Paradigm Theory can identify potential sources of audience conflict by illuminating sources of disbelief arising from both values and life experiences that contradict the corporate message.

Strategy as Practice and the Narrative Turn

“…Thus for Fisher (1989, p. 57), 'all forms of human communication can be seen fundamentally as stories, as interpretations of aspects of the world occurring in time and shaped by history, culture and character.' Thus, any instance of communication from a formal business plan (Martens et al, 2007) to an advertisement (e.g., Stutts & Barker, 1999) can be considered through the lens of narrative and be assessed in terms of what Fisher (1984) calls its 'narrative probability' (internal coherence and consistency) and 'narrative fidelity' (resonance with listeners or readers' values and historical and cultural understandings -echoed in Brown's [1990] condition of 'ringing true').…”

Good Guys : A Cultural Semiotic Study of the Print Advertising of the Oil Industry (1900-2000)

“…56 Heath (2002) and Heath & Cousino (1990) have also investigated this communicative phenomenon and found that it is a catalytic strategy which is used to prompt or make things happen (9). However, I would like to posit that image repair strategies and crisis communication as examined for example by Benoit (1997), Stutts & Barker (1999) and Peter Svensson (2009), are also forms of issues management and can even be subsumed into corporate narrative. Øyvind Ihlen, (1994) who has taken a rhetorical approach 57 to investigate the ways in which organizations try to influence and indeed create both public opinion and policies on energy and the environment, extended this to what he terms critical rhetoric and uses the technique to study public relations strategies, or "Radical PR".…”

“…Stutts & Barker 1999, Livesey, 2001, Livesey & Kearins 2002, Backer, 2008, Pettenger & Plec, 2010. Moreover, with the exception of the research into Mobil's different regular newspaper contributions, the focus of the studies has generally been on corporate reports of different types.…”

“…The campaign, which dates from the beginning of the 1990s, ran on TV both in Britain and internationally as well as in international business publications, and was intended partly as an answer to critics of the oil industry for its greed and lack of concern for the future. In other words, it was a form of image repair strategy (Benoit 1997, Stutts & Barker 1999, Svensson 2009). …”

“…Pettenger & Plec (2010) have also studied how the company has "greened" its image and use Goffman's concept of frame together with Bateson's "play frame" from 1972 to help them. Stutts & Barker (1999) have studied ExxonMobil's use of the narrative paradigm to promote their image and focus their attention on the company's "Human Driver" campaign.…”