Maria Sivenkova

Department of Communication Studies, Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus. Email: maria.sivenkova@gmail.com

Abstract: The article identifies some typical breakthrough events serving as building blocks in stories about companies’ milestones and some other genres of marketing storytelling. These are events referring to the developmental stage of a product’s life cycle depicting how a product, company or brand achieves a breakthrough. Three main types of such breakthrough events are discussed: (1) company/product/brand’s breakthough as a result of innovation, (2) company/product/ brand’s breakthough due to cooperation, and (3) company/product/brand’s breakthough as a result of celebrity endorsement or patronage. It is shown that marketing storytellers resort to various linguistic means to promote product/company milestones and convey the idea of transformation and excellence: verbs with the semantics of change, adjectives denoting excellence, adjectives in the superlative degree among others.

Keywords: marketing storytelling, company/product/brand stories, stories about company/product milestones, breakthrough events, the language of breakthrough.

Introduction

In today’s era of communication overflow, storytelling has become part and parcel of both digital and traditional marketing communication. Juggling diverse content marketers tell engaging stories about products to attract attention, elicit interest and build trust, to deliver a consistent message across many channels, to generate emotional responses from consumers and ultemately to ensure customer retention [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

Research shows that marketing stories exist in several versions. For example, every successful company or product needs a creation story that generates trust in the product by setting the stage for the company and its brands (e.g. founder stories, geek-in-the-garage stories). This genre of marketing storytelling is probably popular because the issue of origin “is not only important to end consumers, it is important to new and existing employees, to vendor and partner relationships, to advocates – including lenders and Wall Street” [6].

As shown in [7], marketers often describe the initial stage of a product’s life cycle [8] as a logical outcome of someone’s serious effort. Brands and products are often created as as result of several generations’ hard work or they may come to exist due to the founders’ experiments and acquisitions. Besides, the founder can obtain the product as a result of a serendipitous event – an accidental discovery or present. On a less happy note, products and brands sometimes come into being after the founder experiences a misfortune or mishap.

Another important type of marketing storytelling is stories [9] about the company’s milestones [10]. Such stories focus on important events thoughout the company’s history that have shaped the company and often concentrate on big effort in times of deep crisis. In what follows I shall largely focus on this genre of marketing storytelling. Although corporate storytelling is a relatively well-researched field of marketing, there seems to be a knowledge gap on the range of events that constitute narratives belonging to various copywriting genres.

In this study, I attempt to classify the most common types of company milestones in marketing stories. These are events typically referring to the developmental stage of a company’s or a product’s life cycle explaining how a product, company or brand achieves a breakthrough, as illustrated in Example (1):

(1) With this foray into clothing, Adidas turned the sports business into a whole new ballgame. […] The bulk of their business would shift from sports to leisure, and they would suddenly become part of urban fashion, drawing celebrities that had never set foot in a sports club.

At one of the nation team’s training sessions he [Adi Dassler] bumped into Willy Seltenreich, the manager of Schwahn, a small-time German supplier. Once they got talking, Dassler asked Seltenreich to make about a thousand tracksuits for Adidas, with ‘three stripes running down the pipes just like that’.

Once the warm-up suits had been adopted by Bayern Munich in 1962, the few boxes of tracksuits quickly turned into huge deliveries. Other football clubs and retailers eagerly ordered their own. Since they already got their boots from Adidas, it was just as easy to buy shirts from them as well. After a few years Adidas had elbowed out most of Schwahn’s other customers, and the Dassler family resolved to buy the company [11].

As Example (1) demonstrates, marketing storytellers resort to what may be called ‘the language of breakthrough’ when reporting on a company’s, product’s or brand’s milestones. These are nouns with the semantics of becoming envolved in a new activity or sphere (e.g. ‘foray’), and verbs denoting change (‘to turn into’,‘to shift’), inclusion (‘to become part of’), choice (‘to adopt’), firm decision (‘to resolve’) or domination (‘to elbow out’) supported by adverbs denoting speed and suddenness (‘quickly’, ‘suddenly).

Data and research question

My analysis is based on the stories in English, Russian and German derived from several sources: books dedicated to specific brands, collections of printed stories, such as [12], digital collections (e.g. www.top-fashion-designers, www.brandpedia.ru, fashionlifes.com/modnye-brendy, www.historyofthings.info, www.trustedwatch.com/knowledge/history-of-brands), corporate websites, biographies of famous entrepreneurs, as well as blog entries dedicated to the history of trade marks.

A noteworthy feature of digital product stories is that they may be presented in several forms, usually as text or combinations of text, photography and graphics. Occasionally audio- and video files are employed to tell product or brand stories. Besides, marketing stories can be narrated by representatives of the company, by endorsers of the product (e.g. professional actors recounting the story on behalf of the company or famous personalities acting as brand ambassadors), by anonymous copywriters or by journalists.

Consequently, the marketing texts analysed in this study differ significantly in the level of details and in the degree of (in)formality in terms of the storytelling techniques applied by the authors, as Excerpts (2)-(4) demonstrate:

2. The petite sac à courroie pour dame, first created in the 1930s, is renamed the Kelly bag after Grace Kelly (whose trousseau includes Hermès’s goodies) appears in Life concealing her pregnancy with the bag [13].

3. Hollywood’s most precious princess, Grace Kelly, has been the not-so-unofficial muse behind the Hermès Kelly Bag. And did you know the reason why the Hermès handbag received so much attention when Grace Kelly went out and about? She was attempting to hide her private “baby bump” with her Hermès bag — which was photographed and adored by the public. But let’s take a step back on the history of the Hermès Kelly Bag… [14].

4. The Kelly bag is so named after the actress Grace Kelly, when in 1956, the then Princess of Monaco used one of her two favorite Hermès bags to shield her pregnant stomach from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. Photographs of her covering her stomach bulge with her hallowed Hermès were splashed all over the world and made it onto the cover of Life magazine!

When discussing her high-profile life, Kelly said “the freedom of the press works in such a way that there is very little freedom from it.” A sentiment that many A-list celebrities and royals can still relate to today.

When faced with a pack of nosy photographers, Stephanie Pendersen, in her book, Handbags, WhatEvery Woman Should Know, says that the shy, newly married Princess, not yet wishing to announce her pregnancy to the world, did what any woman would do and hid her secret in her handbag! Such was Kelly’s influence at the time that from henceforth, her essential accessory became known as the “Kelly” bag [15].

As we can see, recounting essentially the same episode, Example (2) originates from Hermès timeline published by Voguepedia, an influential online resource documenting the world of fashion, whereas Examples (3) and (4) are derived from two blog entries written by the award-winning luxury marketing writer and digital marketer Christopher Parr and by Gill Hart, a fashion professional specializing in women’s fashion, respectively. As we can see, in Excerpt (2), the reference to the bag’s name origin is strictly factual, which is typical of many corporate marketing resources, whereas in (3) and especially in (4) more details are provided and an attempt is made to elicit the reader’s interest and help her identify with the topic. Cf. also the stylistically unmarked ‘pregnancy’ and ‘pregnant stomach’ with the informal euphemism ‘baby bump’.

Additionally, the texts I analysed for this study sometimes contain factual differences in their portrayal of corporate or product milestones, which may be caused by the fact that the authors work with different sources reporting on the same events with a different level of details. To illustrate, the episode describing the origin of Adidas’ diversification strategy in Example (1) presents the company’s clothing foray as a result of a meeting between Adi Dassler and Willy Seltenreich at the nation team’s training sessions, whereas in another text (quoted in Example 8), Adi Dassler and Willy Seltenreich met at a party. Moreover, according to the author of the text quoted in (8), the cooperation between both companies lasted a long time due to mutual sympathy, whereas (1) names the elbowing of other Schwahn’s customers by Adidas as the main reason behind the successful long-term cooperation.

In my view, such cases highlight the dilemma of maintaining the balance between artistic freedom and authenticity many marketing storytellers seem to face. By putting an emphasis on narrative craft in their texts, marketing storytellers can generally achieve higher emotional involvement on the part of the reader and thus are able to reach their primary goal of ensuring that the company, product or brand is noticed, remembered and well-liked. However, the blurring of borders between fiction and documentary allowed in creative writing may entail credibility or legal issues in corporate and professional contexts. On the other hand, putting the emphasis on the factual results in the tedious assortments of facts and dates lacking any characters and plot structure that populate many corporate websites.

In what follows, I am going to show that company milestones – when reflected in marketing stories – may refer both to a company’s internal processes and external circumstances and the company’s relations with the business world, such as customer relations and partnerships. Although they may be grouped around two major poles – success and failure – this paper is going to focus on the building blocks of corporate success stories.

So what can marketing stories tell us on how the product, brand or company develops and reaches a breakthrough?

1. Company/product/brand’s development due to innovative approaches and smart business processes

By applying unconventional approaches in manufacturing and marketing companies and brands claim new grounds, boost sales and attract new customers. It is obvious that meticulous reporting on such innovations belongs to the nuts and bolts of marketing communication, which turns many marketing texts into genre-sanctioned displays of corporate achievements. The citius-altius-fortius approach manifests itself through enumerations of new production facilities, product lines, yearly production amounts, points of sale, etc. that go hand in hand with references to innovations and smart business tactics.  

Some brands are lucky enough to have achieved a breakthough due to applying a pioneering approach to business, for instance by inventing a completely new business model. To illustrate, the House of Worth, a French house of high fashion, owed much of its success to the business acumen of its owner, Charles Frederick Worth, who invented the very concept of a fashion house itself, with several designs being prepared for each season shown by live models to wealthy customers. What is more, another interesting aspect was designing unique clothes to his major customer, Empress Eugénie, and subsequently producing several simplified imitations as limited editions for some other customers.

My data show that the older the company or brand is the more numerous its technological achievements seem to be. Which is more, the level of detail in their presentation also appears to increase, especially in the German marketing texts I have analysed. To illustrate, the history of Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur in Berlin (the King’s Porcelain Factory) contains several references to state-of-the-art innovation, as Example (5) shows:

5. 1796 | Ganz energiebewusst

Als moderne Manufaktur forciert die KPM neue Technologien. Mehrere, übereinander liegende Brennkammern machen die neuen Öfen des Steingutfabrikanten Ungerer wesentlich effizienter.

1797 | Mit Volldampf in die Zukunft

Auf Anraten des Vorstands der Königlichen Porzellanmanufaktur-Kommission, des ehemaligen Ministers Friedrich Anton von Heynitz, erwirbt die KPM als erstes Unternehmen im Lande eine zehn PS starke Dampfmaschine, die nachweislich zehn Pferde einspart [16]. 

While holding comparative advantages in technology and in inventing business concepts and models is only available to a chosen few, many mainstream marketing texts typically emphasize that their companies and brands became successful through talented promotions and marketing.

To illustrate, several texts on Joy, the iconic fragrance created in 1930 and still ranking as one of the most expensive perfumes in the world, praise Jean Patou’s marketing savvy in promoting this expensive products at the time of the Great Depression. As the story goes, the Parisian perfumer presented the extravagant perfume to his wealthy Americal customers whose fortunes had been ravaged in the stock market crash. The tactic paid off and the product became a classic.

Contemporaty brands also typically highlight the marketing strategy and creative methods they use for selling their products, such as, for instance, marketing them in video games (Diesel).

While most important innovations are mentioned in official marketing texts for status reasons, some less significant inventions often play the role of attention-getters, as Excerpt (6) from a blogpost on the history of Harrods, the famous London upmarket department store, demonstrates: 

6. “Brandy to calm your nerves sir?”

Harrods continued to grow, expand and innovate. They were true thought leaders and there is no greater example than the opening of the words first escalator in 1898.  People were undoubtedly nervous about going on this crazy moving contraption.  So, to coax them on, and to settle their nerves they were given free, imported brandy when they stepped off. Now that’s a tradition I wish they had kept! [17]

In Example (6), the language of breakthrough includes one noun denoting leadership (‘thought leader’), three verbs with the semantics of growth (‘to grow’, ‘to expand’) and change (‘to innovate’), and the phrase ‘there is no greater example than’ introducing the escalator milestone.

2. Company/product/brand’s development through cooperation

Many products’ and brands’ careers often do not truly take off until the company founders undergo cooperation with celebrities or other companies or until they recruit new top employees. Being an important element of marketing story plot structure, such accounts of successful cooperations simultaneously serve as an image-boosting strategy. By mentioning influential business partners companies try to boost credibility, as shown in Example (7):

7. Diesel is an Italian company, which started in 1978 by Renzo Rosso and his former boss Adriano Goldschmied (of the AG Jeans company). […] In 1988, Wilbert Das joined as the creative director and the brand began to take off. Das served as the creative director for all of the brand’s divisions. […] After Das joined the brand as creative director, he assisted in growing the company beyond both a custom denim brand and solely an Italian company. Diesel has grown to truly be a lifestyle brand. […] Diesel has also had many notable collaborations: In 2008, a special denim line with Adidas. Fuel for Life, a fragrance collaboration with L’Oreal, a watch and jewelry collaboration with Fossil. In 2008, the brand also created 500 limited edition Diesel cars with Fiat [18].

It transpires that successful cooperations often start with a serendipitous meeting, as Excerpt (8) demonstrates. It recounts the details of a successful partnership as a result of a chance encounter between Adi Dassler (owner of Adidas) and Willy Seltenreich (owner of Schwahn, a German textile company), which brought about diversification of Adidas products and thereby established a new era in Adidas brand history.

8. На той же Олимпиаде Ади приходит в голову мысль предлагать спортсменам другие товары под маркой Adidas. Первой пробой диверсификации стало начатое через несколько месяцев производство спортивных сумок. И хотя кроссовки остаются основным производством, Ади подыскивает себе партнера, который возьмет на себя производство одежды. Случайно на какой-то вечеринке Ади познакомился с хозяином текстильной фабрики Вилли Зельтенрайхом. Выпив вместе, Ади заказал ему тысячу спортивных костюмов с тремя полосками вдоль рукавов. Товар пошел хорошо, а партнеры так понравились друг другу, что скоро Зельтенрайх стал шить только для „Адидас“ [19].

Although portrayals of successful cooperation prevail in marketing stories, cases of unfortunate partnerships can also serve as an important milestone in future development of company or product. Excerpt (9) demonstrates vividly how complications in business and interpersonal relationships can nethertheless bring about positive development.

9. In 1922 while on holiday in Europe with his wife, Factor visited the headquarters of Leichner in Germany for whom he was by now the biggest retailer of their theatrical stick greasepaint, he was snubbed and kept waiting at reception. Upset at this treatment he left and immediately cabled his sons to begin selling his own brand of greasepaint. Up until then Factor had been making his own greasepaint for use on his clients, but had made no attempt to market it while he was representing other brands. Now he concentrated on his own produce which he offered in a collapsible tube, instead of in the stick form used by other producers. His tube greasepaint was not only more hygienic but also could be applied more thinly and evenly. Soon Max Factor’s version was the leading brand [20].

In line with the analysis presented above, the language of breakthrough is represented here by the adjectives with the semantics of immediateness (‘immediately’, ‘soon’) and excellence (‘he leading brand’).

In sum, one of the most important types of corporate milestones is related to both the company’s internal processes (new hires) and the company’s relations with the business world (cooperations).

3. Company/product/brand’s development due to successful celebrity endorsements or patronage

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many brands achieve a breakthough after being endorsed by someone famous. For instance, the commercial success of Rodopis-Serviteur, one of the first mass-produced lipsticks named Rodopis after Cinderella’s Greco-Egyptian predecessor could have been limited if it were not for Sara Bernardt’ s enthusiastic consent to advertise the ‘stylo d’amour’ (Fr. – ‘love pen’) or ‘Eros’s magic wand’ (cf. saucisses – ‘little sausages’, the derogatory nickname initially given to lipsticks by the general public).

Similarly, the Kelly bag designed by the luxury-goods manufacturer Hermès became an important status symbol after the American actress, fashion icon and Princess of Monaco Grace Kelly used the handbag to hide her pregnancy from paparazzi (see Examples (2)-(4) quoted in the introduction).

Some companies or brands are lucky enough to enjoy the patronage of influential people thoughout their entire history. To illustrate, the above-mentioned Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur in Berlin enjoyed the support of seven Prussian kings and emperors, who granted the factory tax benefits, placed large orders and even helped with corporate symbols. In fact, the introduction of the cobalt-blue scepter granted to the factory as logo by the Prussian king Frederick the Great in 1763 appeared to be one of the most helpful incentives, along with the introduction of a special decree prohibiting custom’s officers to examine the barrels with porcelain produced by the factory, as Example (10) shows:

2. Eine Woche nach dem Erhalt von Wegelys Brief stimmt Friedrich II. dem Begehren zu und ergänzt es um ein weiteres Privileg: Damit das Arkanum, das wie ein Staatsgeheimnis gehütete Rezept zur Porzellanherstellung, unter keinen Umständen offenbart werden kann, ist es den Zollbeamten verboten, in Wegelys Fässer zu schauen. Außerdem darf Wegely seine Mitarbeiter zur Wahrung des Geheimnisses vereidigen. Die Großzügigkeit des Königs hat wirtschaftliche Gründe: Die Exklusivität steigert den Marktwert des “weißen Goldes” [21].

Similarly, the contemporary Austrian gourmet empire Gerstner owes much of its success to the patronage of the emperial court, whose official confectionery supplier the company became in 1873. In addition, Preussische Spirituosen Manufaktur in Berlin (the Prussian distillery) developed necely under the patronage of the German Emperor Wilhelm I. Needless to say, both marketing texts highlight the role of celebrated patrons accordingly. By placing references to the patronage already in the introduction to the corporate timeline, the marketing storytellers make sure this important fact becomes the first thing the reader learns about when she is browsing though the corporate websites or looking through other types of marketing texts.

4. Other milestones

In addition to the above-mentioned milestones, a number of other key corporate events may feature in marketing stories in the role of breakthrough events. Receiving awards and impressive orders, celebrating anniversaries, taking part in important exhibitions, opening new flagship stores, making IPOs are the most typical examples of the building blocks that constitute product or company success stories. Examples (11) and (12), derived from Tiffany’s and Max Factor’s websites, illustrate the point vividly:

11. At every venue, Tiffany won the highest honors. The company’s exhibit at the 1889 Paris fair was heralded as “the most extraordinary collection of jewels ever produced by an American jewelry house.” Tiffany produced an equally praiseworthy collection for the 1900 Paris fair, along with magnificent silver pieces based on Native American designs. This unprecedented number of awards led to Tiffany’s appointment as Royal Jeweler to the crowned heads of Europe, as well as the Ottoman Emperor and the Czar of Russia [22].

12. In 1925 the company received its biggest order to date when it had to complete a rush order to supply 600 gallons of light olive makeup to the set of the movie Ben-Hur to ensure that the skin colour of the extras used in filming undertaken in America would match that of the darker skinned Italian extras in the scenes filmed in Italy [23].

As we can see, these excerpts contain three adjectives in the superlative degree (‘the highest’, ‘the most extraordinary’, ‘the biggest’) and three adjectives with the semantics of exclusivity and excellence (‘unprecedented’, ‘magnificent’, ‘praiseworthy’). What Example (11) also shows is that several breakthrough events may combine to constitute a product/company milestone story (exhibitions + awards + appointments).

Another important aspect of company milestone stories is related to corporate symbols, such as company logos, banners, famous jewels etc. To illustrate, the famous Tiffany Yellow Diamond was reset in an exquisite necklace of white diamonds in order to travel to several gala celebrations to mark the company’s 175^th anniversary.

We may hypothesise that by mentioning such curious facts and episodes from the company’s history marketing storytellers attempt to hold attention and generate positive emotional responses from their audiences. Consequently, by incorporating such events in marketing stories copywriters probably increase retention of brand memories in the customer’s mind. Besides, references to such milestones seem to be helpful, because it is significantly easier for consumers to identify with the brand that is presented in such a personalised or entertaining way, which may contribute to customer loyalty.

Conclusion

In sum, marketing storytellers resort to various linguistic means to promote product/company milestones and convey the idea of transformation and excellence: verbs with the semantics of change, adjectives denoting excellence, adjectives in the superlative degree.

The most frequently occurring milestones are innovations, cooperations and endorsements, followed by awards, big orders, anniversaries, exhibitions and some other types of the building blocks that constitute product or company success stories. In addition, several breakthrough events may combine to constitute one product/company milestone story.

Marketing storytelling has become a vital tool enabling marketers to achieve several important goals. By circulating stories about companies, products or brands corporations attempt to reinforce their marketing message and to link emotions to their products. Consumers who read, watch or listen to such stories are encouraged to trust the products or brands and make emotional associations with them.

In a way, storytelling resembles advertising from the point of view of its functioning, allowing companies to achieve two primary advertising goals: (i) of getting noticed by attracting emotional responses from consumers and (ii) of ensuring that the product or brand is remembered and well-liked.

Other types of marketing stories need to be explored to identify probable genre- and cross-cultural variation.

References and notes

[1] Gargiulo, Terrence L. (2005). The Strategic Use of Stories in Organizational Communication and Learning, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.

[2] Jantsch, J. (2006). Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson.

[3] du Plessis, E. (2005). The Advertised Mind: Groundbreaking Insights into How our Brains Respond to Advertising, London, Sterling, VA: Millward Brown, Kogan Page.

[4] Simmons, A. (2007). Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact, N.Y.: AMACOM/American Management Association.

[5] Yiannis, G. (2002). Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[6] Hanlon, P. (2006). Primal Branding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, And Your Future, New York: Free Press, p. 12.

[7] Sivenkova, M. (2012). On some initiating events in stories of companies, products and brands, Rhetoric and Communication, Vol. 4. Mode of access: https://rhetoric.bg.

[8] See Day (1981) on the concept of product life cycle in marketing (Day, G. (1981). The product life cycle: Analysis and applications issues. Journal of Marketing, Vol. 45: 60–67).

[9] Following Alexander (2011, p. 13), for a given audience, the story is defined in this article as “a sequence of content, anchored on a problem, which engages that audience with emotion and meaning”. This broad definition allows studying stories published in a digital format in addition to those published offline (Alexander, B. (2011). The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media, Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO).

[10] Fog, Klaus, Budtz, Ch. and Yakaboylu, B. (2005). Storytelling: Branding in Practice, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

[11] Smit, B. (2007) Pitch Invasion: Adidas, Puma and the Making of Modern Sport [Kindle Edition], London, New York: Penguin.

[12] Berndorff, L. and Friedrich, T. (2008). 1000 Tage die die Welt bewegten: Legendäre Taten, spannende Geschichten und verschollene Momente, Hamburg: Moewig Verlag.

[13] http://www.vogue.com/voguepedia/Hermes. Retrieved October 7, 2014.

[14] Parr, Christopher. History of the Hermes Kelly Bag and Grace Kelly, November 27, 2011. Retrieved October 7, 2014 from http://pursuitist.com/hermes-kelly-bag

[15] Hart, Gill. History of the Hermes Kelly Bag. Retrieved October 7, 2014 from https://suite.io/gill-hart/tfr2qc

[16] Website of King’s Porcelain Factory in Berlin (Königliche Porzellan Manufaktur). Retrieved October 14, 2014 from https://de-de.kpm-berlin.com/kpm-berlin/unternehmen/historie.

[17] The History of Harrods | A famous London Brand, posted by oldelo

ndon on Aug. 20, 2011. Retrieved October 4, 2011 from http://oldelondon.org/2011/08/20/history-of-harrods.

[18] Everything You Need To Know About Diesel The Brand. Retrieved October 14, 2014 from http://www.denimblog.com/c/a/everything-you-need-to-know-about-diesel-the-brand.

[19] Синебрюхов, Л. Хозяин трех полос. Известия. 11 февраля 2005. Retrieved October 14, 2014 from http://izvestia.ru/news/299608

[20] Max Factor’s website. Retrieved October 14, 2014 from http://www.maxfactorproducts.com/max-factor.

[21] Website of King’s Porcelain Factory in Berlin.

[22] Tiffany’s website. Retrieved October 14, 2014 from http://press.tiffany.com/ViewBackgrounder.aspx?backgrounderId=33

[23] Max Factor’s website.

Bibliography

Alexander, B. (2011). The New Digital Storytelling: Creating Narratives with New Media, Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO.

Day, G. (1981). The product life cycle: Analysis and applications issues. Journal of Marketing, Vol. 45: 60–67.

Fog, Klaus, Budtz, Ch. and Yakaboylu, B. (2005). Storytelling: Branding in Practice, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

Gargiulo, Terrence L. (2005). The Strategic Use of Stories in Organizational Communication and Learning, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe.

Hanlon, P. (2006). Primal Branding: Create Zealots for Your Brand, Your Company, And Your Future, New York: Free Press.

Jantsch, J. (2006). Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide, Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson.

du Plessis, E. (2005). The Advertised Mind: Groundbreaking Insights into How our Brains Respond to Advertising, London, Sterling, VA: Millward Brown, Kogan Page.

Simmons, A. (2007). Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins: How to Use Your Own Stories to Communicate with Power and Impact, N.Y.: AMACOM/American Management Association.

Sivenkova, M. (2012). On some initiating events in stories of companies, products and brands. Rhetoric and Communication, Vol. 4. Mode of access: https://rhetoric.bg.

Yiannis, G. (2002). Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

© Реторика и комуникации

© Maria Sivenkova