Issue and Argument

The global digital advertising landscape includes significant investments in storytelling-based content, with estimates reaching into the billions of dollars (Holt, 2016; Van Laer et al., 2019). While the literature on traditional brand storytelling is extensive and well-documented (De Oliveira Júnior et al., 2022), research on person-brand storytelling and understanding of its potential is still in its infancy (Gross et al., 2023; Simonnot-Lanciaux & Dantas, 2023). With the rise of influencer marketing, issues related to person-brands (i.e., brands that are also people, such as influencers, artists, athletes, and academics; Fournier & Eckhardt, 2019) are becoming even more relevant. In fact, person-brands and traditional brands have different characteristics that make them non-interchangeable (Parmentier et al., 2013). A crucial difference lies in the reliance of person-brands on a veridical personality (Eng & Jarvis, 2020), which happens to be essential for fostering genuine parasocial relationships with their audiences (Schramm & Hartmann, 2008). Interestingly, parasocial relationships seem to play a central role in understanding person-brand storytelling: storytelling generates narrative transportation, which in turn reinforces parasocialization (Centeno & Wang, 2017), while parasocialization influences narrative persuasion (Wohlfeil & Whelan, 2012). In traditional brand storytelling, the effect of narrative transportation on narrative persuasion is mediated by “self-referencing” (Escalas, 2007) or “retrospective reflection” (Hamby et al., 2018). Conversely, this research aims to empirically establish that when person-brands use storytelling, this effect is at least partially mediated by an increase in parasocialization.

Methodology

1. Pilot and Field Studies

The pilot study examines the co-occurrence of storytelling and parasocialization in the Instagram posts of 30 British male rock musicians. In the field study, a larger dataset of Instagram posts from over 30,000 influencers (Kim et al., 2021) is analyzed using natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Metrics are created to detect storytelling elements in posts and parasocialization dimensions in their comments, leading to the assignment of “storytelling scores” for posts and “parasocialization scores” for their comments, which can then be used to test whether the two are correlated.

2. Experimental Phase

Three sequential experiments are then conducted with participants recruited through Amazon MTurk. Experiment 1 aims to establish the causal relationship between narrative transportation, parasocialization, and narrative persuasion using a 2x2 between-subjects design (storytelling vs. no storytelling/traditional vs. person-brand). Participants are exposed to Instagram posts promoting a new album by a fictional British male rock musician (person-brand) or a British record label (traditional brand). Following exposure, participants complete questionnaires assessing their levels of narrative transportation (Jarrier et al., 2018), parasocialization (Schramm & Hartmann, 2008), and narrative persuasion across attitudes (Delgado-Ballester et al., 2012) and purchase intentions (Nguyen et al., 2020).

Experiment 2 replicates the first experiment with different types of person-brands, using a 2x4 between-subjects design (storytelling vs. no storytelling/rock musician vs. fashion influencer vs. celebrity chef vs. academic) to test the robustness of the mechanism. All stimuli are Instagram posts promoting a product marketed under the person-brand’s name and congruent with their activity (a new album, a piece of jewelry, a chef's knife, and a book, respectively).

Experiment 3 examines whether parasocialization fully mediates the effect of narrative transportation on narrative persuasion, or whether self-referencing still partially mediates it. As modalities can affect advertising effectiveness (Darley & Lim, 2023), their effect is also examined in a 2x3 between-subjects experimental design (storytelling vs. no storytelling/text vs. sound vs. video). All stimuli show person-brands promoting products in Instagram posts of different formats (a caption in an image post, a voiceover in an image post, or a voiceover in a video post). Measures still include levels of narrative transportation, parasocialization, and narrative persuasion, with the addition of self-referencing (Martin et al., 2004).

Takeaway and Results

This research aims to improve the effectiveness of digital storytelling by advocating the use of person-brand storytelling. Its main findings include the empirical demonstration that parasocialization mediates the relationship between narrative transportation and narrative persuasion when person-brand (vs. traditional brand) storytelling is used. It also examines whether this mediation is partial or whether parasocialization completely replaces self-referencing in the persuasion process. In addition, this work assesses the robustness of this model across different types of person-brands and modalities. The significance of these findings lies in the identification of parasocialization as a mediator, which paves the way for further research exploring the effect of its known moderating factors in a narrative framework, such as the community size of the person-brand (Lehto Brewster & Lyu, 2020) or its attractiveness (Yuan & Lou, 2020). These insights have the potential to optimize the multi-billion dollar digital storytelling market and provide person-brand managers with valuable tools to leverage social media storytelling.

Agenda and Stage of Completion of Research

The pilot study is complete and conclusive. Indeed, our data shows that when posts include storytelling, audience comments show signs of parasocialization. The NLP metrics for the field study are also complete. The next step is to synthesize them into algorithms to assign storytelling scores to posts and parasocialization scores to comments in the larger dataset. The field study is expected to be completed by the end of fall 2023. Subsequent experimental studies are planned for winter 2024. Our goal is to have a paper ready for submission by spring 2024.

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