International Journal of Advertising

Advertising Narratives: Transportation, Imagination, and Brand Storytelling

Advertising Narratives: Transportation, Imagination, and Brand Storytelling

With AI and other tools supercharging nonspecialists’ abilities to create and communicate narratives, we are in the midst of an unprecedented growth in advertising storytelling—perhaps with a corresponding rise in the need to understand the human, the cultural, and the narrative (Applequist & Ball, 2025). Emotional brandings (Kim, Ahn, & Ye, 2025; Thompson, Rindfleisch & Arsel, 2010) and advertising storytelling function as a powerful cultural resource in their own right (Banet-Weiser, 2012; Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry, 2003). Influencers construct and circulate brand-related stories by weaving them into personal experiences, ensuring that stories seeded in campaigns live on through retellings, remixes, and conversations (Caldwell & Henry, 2020; Kozinets, 2022; Kozinets, Gretzel & Gambetti, 2023). These retellings are also increasingly shaped by algorithmic tools such as AI-generated reviews, comments, or testimonials that circulate alongside human imaginaries and narratives (Diaz, 2025; Hardcastle, Vorster, & Brown 2025; Kozinets, 2022).

In this environment, advertising storytelling can be understood as an adaptive process produced and recombined across humans, AI systems, and media channels. Generative AI scripts dialogue, personalizes arcs, and generates countless variations, while algorithms determine which story fragments audiences encounter (Lal, 2024). Campaigns function less as bounded arcs and more as adaptive or transmedia flows (Hyeyung, 2025), raising questions about authorship, coherence, authenticity, and credibility in advertising storytelling. Yet, as AI-driven narratives proliferate, we must not lose sight of the human craft of advertising storytelling built on relationships (Duan, Lou & Kim, 2025).

Experimental research shows that narrative ads enhance attention, recall, credibility, and persuasion through empathetic processing (viewers feeling drawn into the story; Deighton et al., 1989), transportation (a convergent focus of mental systems on story events; Green & Brock, 2000; Martinez-Navarro & Bigné, 2025; Van Laer et al., 2014), mental simulation (imitative mental representations; Escalas, 2004; Petrova & Cialdini, 2008), and identification (perspective-taking with characters; Busselle & Bilandzic, 2008; Talay, 2025). Yet these mechanisms, while well established, are increasingly tested in environments where narrative forms are short, fragmented, and fleeting. 

Beyond these psychological mechanisms, a deeper cultural understanding of brand meaning can be found through the allegorical power of brand stories, the embrace of brand paradox, and the intertwining of cultural imagination, archetypes, and inaginaries (Brown et al., 2003; Mandagi et al., 2025; Menon, Pillai, & Pai, 2024). With important exceptions, critical approaches and cultural methods like ethnography (Ritson & Elliott, 1999) and netnography are under-utilized. We still know relatively little about what makes an advertising story compelling whether structure, character, or brand integration (Applequist & Ball, 2025; Kim et al., 2024; Vizcaíno-Verdú, Feijoo, & Sádaba, 2025). We lack sufficient understanding about how algorithmic and human-authored narratives interact to create (or fracture) meaning for consumers (Kozinets, 2022; Talay, 2025), or how new media formats such as podcasts funtion (Taylor, 2024).

Our understanding is still growing about storytelling that transpires in digital platforms that demand coherence and immersion in seconds. TikTok skits, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts highlight storytelling’s entertainment value, but entertainment alone does not ensure persuasion. Audiences might remember the attention-grabbingelements of an advertising story but not the product or brand, a challenge known as the “vampire effect” (Stewart and Furse, 1986; Teixeira, Wedel, and Pieters, 2012). While entertainment is increasingly fundamental for sustaining attention (Taylor, 2009; Teixeira, Wedel, & Pieters, 2012), its relationship to persuasion and meaning-making remains undertheorized. The forms, structures, and impacts of influencer storytelling around the globe are still poorly understood (Duan et al., 2025; Kozinets et al., 2023; Vizcaíno-Verdú, et al., 2025). Regardless of technology, the deep-seated cultural template, myths and human relationships continue to be powerful, and under-explored, aspects of the human advertising experience.

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Advertising invites scholarship that explores and perhaps redefines storytelling in advertising. We seek contributions that chart new ground as well as those that revisit foundational historical and narrative theories in light of contemporary cultural and technological contexts. We welcome conceptual and empirical work across advertising and marketing, consumer culture theory, history, sociology, anthropology, media psychology, communication and health commnication, and cultural/media studies. Methods may include controlled or field experiments, ethnography and netnography, archival and historical analysis, semiotic and discourse analysis, neuroscientific measures, and computational approaches from computer science, HCI, and information science. Although approaches may be diverse, all submissions must place advertising or brand storytelling at the center of inquiry.

Suggested Topics

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

1.     Adaptive Narratives Advertising

·       (Re-)Conceptualizing what advertising storytelling is in contemporary contexts

·       Exploringthe AI-generated content that circulates alongside human imaginaries and narratives

·       Moving beyond “do narratives work in advertising?” toward “how do they work in contemporary media environments?”

·       Investigating the current craft of advertising storytelling from the creator's perspective

·       Revisiting narrative advertising persuasion mechanisms such as transportation, empathy, identification, and mental simulation in fragmented and multi-platform environments

·       Comparing when and why narrative advertising is more, or less, effective than non-narrative approaches

·       Investigating questions about authorship, coherence, authenticity, and credibility in advertising storytelling when campaigns function as adaptive or transmedia flows.

·       Examining how algorithmic and human-authored narratives interact to create (or fracture) meaings for consumers

2. Narrative Strategies for Short-Form and Emerging Formats

·       Analyses of brand storytelling strategies, where advertising narratives are designed to act as cultural resources

·       Researching the human craft of advertising storytelling built on relationships

·       The role of retro-narratives nostalgia, and other human and cultural elements in advertising

·       Micro-narratives in TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts: narrative advertisng strategies for persuasion in seconds

·       Examining the forms, structures, and/or impacts of influencer storytelling around the globe

·       Cross-device coherence in narrative advertising: how audiences integrate story arcs across TV, mobile, and digital formats

·       Algorithmic sequencing and recombination of story fragments, and implications for narrative coherence and persuasion in advertising

·       Brand integration challenges in short-form storytelling advertising and risks of the “vampire effect”

3. Ethical Storytelling

·       Revisiting persuasion mechanisms (empathetic processing, transportation, mental simulation, and identification) in contemporary environments

·       Tensions between advertising messages and social and political issues (e.g., environmentalism, self-esteem, social justice)

·       Exploring the dialectical relationship between brand storytelling and consumer resistance, skepticism, or counter-narratives (e.g., 'culture jamming')?

·       Story fatigue and manipulation: As every campaign now “tells a story,” are consumers experiencing overexposure, leading to cynicism or narrative distrust? At what point does advertising stories become manipulative or exploitative rather than engaging?

·       Dark narratives: Persuasive stories may normalize harmful stereotypes, dramatize false conflicts, or glamorize risky behaviors (e.g., alcohol, gambling, body image). Narrative power isn’t neutral. How should advertising research address these risks?

·       Ethics of AI-augmented storytelling: AI-generated or deepfake narratives can simulate empathy and authenticity. But are audiences being misled into believing emotions that were never genuinely felt? How does this alter the ethics of persuasion?

·       Too-good stories vs. brand reality: When narratives overpromise (e.g., sustainability storytelling that masks unsustainable practices), the gap between story and reality becomes an ethical fault line. Should narrative effectiveness also be judged on truthfulness and accountability?

·       How storytelling in advertising creates context for identitys, authenticity, and the quest for the ‘real’?

Submission Guidelines:

Manuscripts should be original and not under consideration by any other publication. All submissions will undergo a rigorous peer-review process. 

Important Dates:

Submissions should be made from November 11, 2026, through December 11, 2026. 

Contact Information:

For inquiries regarding this special issue, please contact Dr. Eunjin (Anna) Kim ([email protected]) or Dr. Robert Kozinets ([email protected]), University of Southern California

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