Out of the Boardroom and into the Showroom: Shifting the Brand Digital Conversation from Emotional Response to Awareness

Abstract

In the contemporary digital environment, brands are modelling their communication strategies on values typical of the corporate world and thus creating a widened narrative which transforms emotional storytelling into something more oriented towards authenticity, reputation and ethics. An insight into where your jeans were packaged or the tags on your trainers were made, a glimpse inside the factories where raw materials are transformed into products, a guide to every step of the process by which fishing nets recovered at sea are recycled into items of clothing---these are just a few examples of what today might be termed "project storytelling": manufacturing information as narrative, sustainability in action to sidestep accusations of greenwashing. Brands are becoming more and more aware of the need to present a transparent creative process in all its phases, as well as to involve the consumer in the dialogue. In this brave new world, there are many admirable examples of brands at which the traditional rhetoric of the fashion narrative (more closely linked to aspirational and purely aesthetic imaginaries) has given way to a total honesty and a commitment to customers and, above all, younger generations, who are ever more concerned with questions of ecology, inclusivity and sustainability.