1. Advertising and Society

A powerful weapon of the industrial production system, advertising has long since ceased to be a simple commercial instrument for publicising products. The advertising communication system is a deep and complex generator of norms, values, lifestyles, and social behaviours that shape public life and human sociability. (^{Oliveira, 2004}, p. 9)

This statement by Paquete de Oliveira remains perfectly current. It states that advertising is no longer a simple technique for mediating communication between supply and demand, having instead become a powerful and influential instrument of persuasion. Its performance has, for one, exceeded the founding nature of its mission - a particular type of discourse aimed at launching and promoting products and services that, within the boundaries of defined legal constraints, pops up in media - and now embodies an economic and commercial function. As a crucial pillar in brand building, advertising has asserted itself in creating innovation, developing new products and services, and fostering competition. At the same time, it has played a founding role in the development and sustainability of media and its market.

The persuasive power and ubiquity achieved by advertising have earned it something akin to an ideological charge; by portraying social and cultural concrete situations, advertising indirectly imposes upon its receivers discourse and signification structures that, in turn, reproduce and amplify themselves due to its persuasive power and mass dissemination (^{Caro, 2017}; Lipovetsky, 2006/2007; ^{Veríssimo, 2008}). ^{Fidalgo claims that (2010}): “in the same way that propaganda became a powerful warfare tool in the first half of the 20th century, so have the industries of persuasion, particularly advertising, become key vectors of economic, social, cultural and political activity” (p. 22).

Despite such alleged power, advertising is undergoing some changes and facing enormous challenges, partially fuelled by ongoing transformations in its model, functions and breadth. The current situation harks back to the 1990s and brings to mind “The Death of Advertising”, a paper by Roland ^{Rust and Richard Oliver, published in 1994}, in the Journal of Advertising. The authors anticipated that the advent of the technologies of that time would bring about the swift destruction of the advertising sector.

However, the advertising market did not collapse; by virtue of its natural flexibility (a trait shared by market and professionals alike), it keeps adapting. The advertising history testifies the advertising market’s ability to adapt to technological, social, and cultural changes constantly. Moreover, it shows us that, at every mutation, advertising has always kept its purpose of working on behalf of brands, advertisers, media and consumers (^{Baynast & Lendrevie, 2014}; ^{Caro, 2017}; ^{Dahlen & Rosengren, 2016}; ^{Rossiter et al., 2018}).

The internet and digital media have set a new order in the organisation and dissemination of content when it comes to technological changes. Web technology, 3D, animation, and digital graphics, as well as digital marketing itself, have afforded the development of new and coexisting formats of online advertising that open the door to multiple strategic opportunities (^{Auladell, 2015}). Those formats range from traditional banners to pop-up windows and video ads. Videos ads have, in fact, left the exclusivity of television to start being produced for internet video channels (e.g., YouTube).

Video ads, which can also be accessed via smartphone, now play a crucial role in advertising, not only under their highly creative content but also because they can be shared among consumers, most notably through social media (^{Dahlen & Rosengren, 2016}). In “If Advertising Won’t Die, What Will It Be?”, ^{Micael Dahlen and Sara Rosengren (2016}), professors at the University of Stockholm, note, in addition, that “consumers now control not only whether to receive but also whether to actively seek out and partake in advertising” (^{Dahlen & Rosengren 2016}, p. 336). Since the emergence of social media, we have been watching a change in the relationships among consumers, advertising and advertisers: we have shifted from a unidirectional vision to a multidirectional vision, one of interaction and dialogue, between consumers and advertisers, where the latter are relying more and more on the suggestions of the former (^{Dahlen & Rosengren 2016}, p. 336), even inviting them to be co-creators of several aspects of advertising production and to take part in it (^{Lawrence et al., 2013}).

It was the era of “advertising as entertainment” - a concept suggested at the turn of the last century by Jesus ^{Requena and Amaya Zárate (1999}), who proposed advertising design where the ad itself and its whole setting be converted into a consumer object. Spurred on by sharing video ads on social media - and the resulting viral effect - that notion is nowadays a reality.

We are witnessing changes in society and the behaviour of the individual/consumer. ^{Lipovetsky (2007}, p. 41) had called our attention to our living in an era of “emotional consumption”, which translates into a new relation with products and sets the primacy of sensations and emotions¹⁴, where each individual engages in the free expression of their pleasures and personal tastes (2007, p. 41). In his Crise no Castelo da Cultura. Das Estrelas Para os Ecrãs (Crisis in the Castle of Culture. From Stars to Screens), Moisés de Lemos ^{Martins (2011}, p. 189) follows the same line of thought, taking us on reflection on the human condition in a technological society where fears, risks and threats rule (^{Martins, 2011}, p. 189). Martins tells us of a technological society that “has a dominant pathos, where sensations, emotions and passions deactivate the centrality of logos and ethos” (^{Martins, 2011}, p. 189), and conveys to us the notion of a society dominated by individualism allied to hedonism. We have dropped the “Aristotelian idea of harmony” to become a pathos-dominated society, characterised by the supremacy of sensations, emotions and passions (^{Martins, 2011}, pp. 188-190).

We live, in fact, in an individual-centred society, where media content that satisfies hedonistic needs coexists with media content in which the ordinary citizen is the protagonist. The successful Big Brother, and other shows like ilk, springs to mind as an example of content where the ordinary citizen is featured in the leading role. As an element of the media system and as a sociological amplifier that portrays a culture (^{Caro, 2017}; D. A. ^{Garcia et al., 2013}, ^{Veríssimo 2008}), the advertising industry is currently reflecting those contents.

When it comes to video advertising (first on television, and increasingly on internet video channels), creatives have been experimenting with developing content that conveys “relevant relationships, or relationships that enable strong connections with their audiences” (^{Escalada, 2016}, p. 48); storytelling should be highlighted as an example of such content¹⁵. Storytelling is an advertising communication technique that has acquired a new centrality in advertising strategies (D’Amato & Panarese, 2016, as cited in ^{Panarese & Villegas, 2018}, p. 65). That is because it involves staging representations of real-life contexts, experiences, everyday life situations, and even complex social issues where the line between reality and traditional advertising content is blurred. Its emotional content, with “human value” and use of real “people”, imparts higher realism and veracity to the ad and induce closer proximity to its audience¹⁶ (^{Escalas, 2004}).

Among the various actions that make up a brand’s transmedia strategy¹⁷, storytelling is currently an advertising communication approach that can create an attractive “experience”, consistent with people’s life experiences and sentiments and in tune with their inclinations. This technique can alleviate spectators’ tensions and provide a path to their action or behaviour (Pallera, 2012, as cited in ^{Panarese & Villegas, 2018}, p. 65). In fact, the premise that individuals are better able to recall information when that information is presented to them as a “story” than when it is presented to them as a list of facts is contributing more and more to an increase in the use of this kind of narrative by creatives (^{Zubiel-Kasprowicz, 2016}).

Ching ^{Chang (2012}), professor of advertising at the University of Taipei¹⁸, sums up in three points the reasons that, in her opinion, explain the success of narratives (storytelling) in advertising:

2. Rhetoric and Advertising

Assuming that the different but complementary approaches can explain the success of storytelling in advertising we have just mentioned, we will now look at a video ad - Dove Real Beauty Sketches (^{Dove US, 2013}), launched by the Dove brand¹⁹. We will endeavour to show that the persuasive power of storytelling lies in the verisimilitude of the story, that is, in how close that story is to everyday life and in the “realism” of the narrative (^{Bal et al., 2011}; ^{Tomás et al., 2018}; ^{van Laer et al., 2013}). Verisimilitude bolsters the brand’s credibility (ethos) and generates a strong emotional relationship with the public (pathos), which makes storytelling a powerful tool for brands (^{Ballester & Sabiote, 2016}; ^{Laurence, 2018}; ^{Salmon, 2016}). We will also highlight similarities to the aspects that make up the concept of narratio, as put forward in Retórica a Herénio (Rhetoric to Herenio; ^{Retórica a Herénio, 1998/2005}, Book 1.12-17)²⁰.

Our analysis draws from the “coincidence” between persuasive and argumentative resources present in advertising praxis and rhetoric. Frequently, there is no clear intention on the creatives’ part to use the rules of rhetoric; often, they are not even conversant with rhetoric doctrine. That said, the coincidences are there (^{Durand, 1970}; ^{Fernández, 2006}; ^{Rey, 2009}). In fact, they may even occur inadvertently. If we go back to the beginnings of advertising, one of the first explanatory models of the message designing process was the elementary AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action), attributed to Elias St. Elmo Lewis and first published in 1925, in “Theories of Selling”, by E. K. Strong (as cited in ^{Martín, 1996}). It recommended that an ad should, in this order, call people’s attention (the moment where we should give the public information about the existence of the product or service) and pick their interest, that is, share a piece of relevant information about the properties, specifications and/or benefits of that product or service. To meet this twofold goal, advertising should use arguments that can elicit desire in the consumer and trigger the action/purchase. Now, this model merely reproduces the functions of docere, delectare and movere espoused by Latin rhetoricians (Cicero among them), according to which rhetoric should teach (docere) through logical arguments; delight, and capture the listener’s attention (delectare); and serve the movere component, that is, persuade an audience through emotions and sentiment, to move it to action (^{Fernández, 2006}).

The video ad Dove Real Beauty Sketches, chosen to illustrate the current paper, depicts a group of women who are asked to describe their most salient facial features and some of their personality traits; all in all, a self-perceptive analysis. While each woman is describing herself, Gil Zamora, a former FBI forensic artist, is listening and sketching the features she reports - a process identical to that of obtaining a “facial composite” (a.k.a. “identikit”) of a perpetrator of a crime based on eyewitnesses’ accounts - without ever establishing visual contact with the woman he is sketching. That ensured that the portraits were made solely based on descriptions, with no visual interference at all. Later, the same artist sketches those same women but based on other people’s accounts. These drawings were made on different days so that the artist would not know which woman he was sketching. The differences between how the women described themselves and what other people saw in them were striking, showing that female self-perception is much more negative than the opinion/visual impression others described. This finding is corroborated by the results of several scientific studies carried out on this theme” (^{Brennan et al., 2010}; ^{McCabe & Monteath,1997}; ^{Secchi et al., 2009}).

We will begin by examining the arrangement (dispositio) of the elements of discourse²¹ as presented in the work of Aristotle (1998/2005, p. 277), also taking into account ^{Barthes’ (1987}) insights on this subject. The elements of discourse there stated are exordium (or proem), narratio (narration, statement of facts/events), confirmatio (confirmation or proof), and epilogue (peroration)²². In the remainder of this paper, however, we will follow the three-part paradigmatic structure of dispositio put forward by ^{Fonturbel (2009}, p. 139) because the specific nature of advertising discourse creates a spatial (and also temporal, in the case of video ads) structuring with its own idiosyncrasies. The advertising discourse is essentially short and, as such, narratio (the statement of the topic and the orator’s/brand’s stance) and argumentatio (the reasons that support the narratio) are merged into one. In this tripartite structure, we find:

The author of ^{Retórica a Herénio (1998/2005}, pp. 65-70) deepens the analysis of the particular aspects of narratio that we have just mentioned, stating that there are three types of narration:

This last type of narratio is, according to the author, divided into two classes:

We can thus say that the power of the Dove campaign lies, precisely, in the story’s verisimilitude and in the fact that it focuses on the characters. It is a story that addresses issues that affect the public’s everyday life. Its characters display relatable physical attributes and express fears, anguishes, suspicions or desires shared by the target public of the message.

At the same time, the narrative departs from traditional advertising canons that communicate notions of youth, wealth or lavishness - “made up” topics, in short, closer to those that characterise cinematic fiction and are somewhat akin to the notion of argumentum, as defined in Retórica a Herénio. Likewise, it departs from the typical discourse about the fantastic (fantasy) and the unreal, which share some traits with the fabulam type mentioned in that text.

In the campaign in question, the message does not stem from an ideal imaginary, as is the case in most traditional advertising, but from the public’s actual values and concerns; it shows real life through arguments that “move” that same public and narrates the feelings and emotions experienced by the characters, which are shared by the public to whom the message is addressed. That shows a “human” facet of advertising, thus contributing to its credibility.

Designing this narrative required plenty of preliminary work (inventio) in which the sender “attempted to find out and design the most suitable arguments for the thesis they intended to advocate for” (^{Nunes, 2015}, p. 10). In other words, there was a stage in the process where ideas were assessed, and arguments were chosen in light of the intended marketing goals and the target public, with a particular emphasis on which characters to choose.

Another crucial element of the persuasive process in advertising is the impact that certain characters have on audiences. What is their persuasion role? Throughout the history of advertising, no one has ever disputed that a lot of care and thought goes into character definition. In an advertising plotline, characters work as virtual receivers, “interpreting” a “self” that is real to the target of the ad. In the methodology he developed to create brand identity, ^{Kapferer (1994/2000}) cautioned that special care should be taken when selecting the leading character for a campaign because their presence aims at “creating a reflection, an ideal image of the consumer/user to whom the ad is addressed, ( … ) therefore working as an aspirational model” (p. 40). The purpose of such presence is that of “convincing” the consumer that that could be his/her image, the image of his/her self that would show before others, should he/she consume the advertised product. Judith ^{Williamson (1994}) was stating the same point when she noted that advertising seemed to be drawing on the cognitive phenomenon of identity building, described by Lacan as the mirror stage (p. 60) - something that occurs when the child takes the image of the adult as a reference and embodies it. It seems to us that, in examining how audiences identify with characters - a subject which study began in the field of art and literature reception and interpretation and later extended to the cinema (^{Metz, 1980}) - psychoanalysis has also helped advertising scholars understand this phenomenon.

There are also models in the field of psychology that help us understand this process. The elaboration likelihood model (ELM), developed by ^{Petty and Cacioppo (1986}), is one of the landmarks in explaining persuasive processes, or the narrative transportation model, developed by ^{Melanie Greene and Timothy Brock (2000}), emerged within a multi-disciplinary structure that integrates cognitive psychology and theory of communication, culture and consumption.

Juan ^{Igartua Perosanz (2007}, p. 41) says that “identification with characters” is a multi-dimensional construct comprising several psychological processes. He sees empathy as one of the essential dimensions of identification, which allows us to understand the process of entertainment content reception and explain the enjoyment derived from being exposed to that content (^{Igartua Perosanz, 2007}, p. 13). The premise here is that through their empathy towards the story’s characters and the imagination they apply to interpret the story’s plot, receivers/consumers experience a feeling of mentally “entering” the world evoked by the narrative, of embarking on a “symbolic journey to other worlds”.

In this perspective, the process by which the consumer identifies with the characters and the narrative includes three properties:

In this perspective, narratives derive from a process of interpreting and attributing meaning to a story. Following in the footsteps of ^{Igartua Perosanz (2007}), ^{van Laer et al. (2013}), in their “The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model”, put forward a broader and revised understanding of the narrative transportation model, which now includes the notion of empathy. Here is, in a nutshell, why narrative transportation occurs, according to ^{van Laer et al. (2013}):

The authors find that narrative transportation appears to be more of an emotional than an intentionally cognitive process and that it leads to potentially increased and long-lasting persuasive effects (^{van Laer et al., 2013}, p. 800).

Going back to the video ad, we can say that we are before a campaign where identification between audience and narrative emerges via empathy towards the characters. In performing a role that brings them closer to the ideals of the target public, the characters “lead” the audience to process and interpret the story as if it were theirs. In other words, because they assimilate the characters’ experience as if they were the ones experiencing it, the audience is “transported”, which puts them in a (transitory) state of detachment relative to the reality they inhabit, while at the same time feeling as if they were experiencing the story’s events themselves.

So, the audience takes a liking to the story’s characters, and the plot activates the audience’s imagination, triggering the “suspension” of “their” reality while the story is being received so they can assimilate the experience that the characters have enjoyed with the advertised brand as theirs.

Let us now focus on the argument aspect. What persuasive forces were mobilised into the ad? What were the arguments used?

Aristotle (1998/2005) says that the orator “persuades through his hearers when they are roused to emotion by his speech; for the judgements we deliver are not the same when we are influenced by joy or sorrow, love or hate” (p. 97).

While it is true that, at its inception, advertising had an informational function, it is no less true that, for years now, we have been watching a trend: increasing use of symbolic arguments, aimed at triggering the public’s emotions, imaginaries, desires and ambitions (^{Solomon, 2018}); in other words, a predominance of pathos.

The Dove campaign is emotional, so persuasion occurs deeper than that found in traditional advertising (^{Escalas, 2004}). The public’s absolute adherence to the cause advocated in the ad has most likely resulted from their being exposed to an unexpected type of discourse, in which arguments focus on feelings and emotions, rather than on products’ features, increasingly indistinguishable from one another.

This campaign has caused an emotional reaction in millions of people and has inspired them to share it with others. In addition to millions of visualisations (bear in mind that the video ad was translated into 25 languages and seen in 110 countries), it was the outpouring of testimonies worldwide that singled it out. Such a level of dissemination was only reached because the advertising narrative was based on a story consistent with the public’s values (^{Panarese & Villegas, 2018}).

The fact that the source/sender - the Dove brand - is perceived as reliable and trustworthy must indeed have played a role in that massive adherence to the ad. Paulo ^{Serra (2015}) tells us that “the credibility of the orator was readily pointed out by Aristotle as one of the main - perhaps the most important - means of persuasion” (p. 127). The reason seems obvious: a person cannot be persuaded by someone whose discourse fails to inspire a modicum of confidence. ^{Serra (2015}) adds that one element that defines ethos is that it “is a necessary proof, particularly when dealing with things about which there is no unequivocal knowledge and which are therefore open to debate” (p. 129). He continues, noting that “the interpretation seems evident: in those things that are uncertain or dubious, where we cannot reach a conclusion on our own, we need to trust someone to overcome the uncertainty and suspicion they arouse” (^{Serra, 2015}, p. 129).

^{Serra (2015}) is referring here to political issues, but what he says in that context, namely on sources of information, can certainly be extended to advertising and brand credibility. One should also note that, since Aristotle, the goal of any argument has always been that of bringing about or increasing the audience’s support for the thesis. Such support will be all the more effective, the more significant the intensity it achieves, triggering in the listeners an action, or, at the very least, a willingness to act at a later opportunity.

In Dove’s advertising campaign, the public’s adherence to the issues and ideals depicted in the ad is abundantly clear in the fact that the video has been shared thousands of times and has generated thousands of comments. This response is the result of a campaign that set a differentiating limit, evidenced personality, and established relations with the public (^{Baynast & Lendrevie, 2014}; ^{Kapferer, 1994/2000}; ^{Kotler & Keller, 2015}) in a cultural and social universe marked by body and self-image concerns. With this campaign, the Dove brand endeavoured to build its renown from universally recognised values and to mobilise the public around them, thus implying that it understands (a) the needs of consumers and (b) their constraints when it comes to a crucial issue in a woman’s life: her self-image. The campaign’s persuasion comes from choosing to focus on the fact that women underestimate themselves.

Matching discourse to the public is also one of the fundamental theses in Aristotle and all of the classical rhetoric (^{Serra, 2008}). The practice of rhetoric entails a discourse directed to an audience, where “the orator underpins his discourse on what the audience expects of him, thus respecting their values, believes, cultural habits, experiences, social status or aspirations” (^{Mateus, 2018}, p. 43). In fact, in Book II of Retórica a Herênio (1998/2005), Aristotle tells us of the different types of individuals who can make up an audience and of their particular attributes: the young, the elderly, the powerful, the aristocrats, those in the prime of life. They are thus psychological descriptions of different human characters.

The creatives who developed the Dove campaign will have had an accurate and up-to-date picture of the psycho-sociological profiles of their audience²⁵, as well as knowledge of their needs, motivations and socio-cultural habits. That enabled them to create and deliver a message that exhibits the values, the issues, and a communication register that coincides with their audience’s socio-cultural norms.

4. Conclusion

Considering that advertising is a powerful and influential instrument of persuasion, albeit undergoing a process of change and facing significant challenges partially caused by shifts in its own model, functions and breadth, and recognising that brands show, nowadays, an appetite for establishing relations with their public through affection and emotions, this paper has attempted to show that storytelling - which may have a structural underpinning in classical rhetoric - can be one of the “tools” brands can use in pursuing that goal.

We can say that storytelling is grounded on the concepts of “story” and ‘“arration about people” as defined in ^{Retórica a Herénio (1998/2005}, Book 1): it attempts to render an account of seemingly actual facts, portraying real-life situations, using characters the public can relate to, displaying feelings, worries, and emotions for purposes of eliciting an emotional response in the audience (evidence of pathos).

We have seen that the brand designed the campaign under analysis; was deemed credible (prominence of ethos); was launched in a time and space marked by a concern with and appropriation of the body, by individuals increasingly loving themselves, by appearance management and a cult of appearance; and that the actions and facts narrated were suitable to the nature of the participants, public opinion and audience’s feelings.

Following in Moisés de Lemos ^{Martins (1998})²⁶ footsteps, we, too, have found that we are before a kind of advertising that refuses some of the topoi (common themes) usually shown in advertising. The advertising we have examined does not feature representations of happy families sharing a meal around a table, married couples having a lovely time, cars travelling along with amazing landscapes where everything is clean and beautiful. It likewise discards sentimental and romantic atmospheres, as well as ideal-like characters in the role of heroes; it does not highlight arguments such as success, a synonym for happiness, or expertise, as an apology for human behaviour - all of the hallmarks of the advertising that is put before our eyes day after day. It is, in sum, a kind of advertising that rejects some of the topoi of modern society, which discourse becomes a mirror of consumers in reflecting social aspirations’ “dreams”.