Much of advertising tells stories. Ads show homemakers solving household problems with powerful cleaning products, families reunited through telephone calls, and even ongoing epics where the brand of coffee somehow becomes a critical prop in the storyline or looking at the back of a card becomes the basis of a relationship. Consumer research has studied story-based advertising from a variety of perspectives. Advertising narratives have been examined under the rubric of drama (Stern 1994; Deighton et al. 1989), transformation (Puto and Wells 1984), and story grammars (Mick 1987). A content analysis conducted for this chapter shows that nearly a quarter of current television ads are in the form of narratives (see p. 275). Why do so many ads tell stories? I argue that ads tell stories because stories are able to involve, captivate, and entertain consumers. More importantly, stories are able to communicate, persuade, demonstrate, and model the products that should be used and the way to use them.
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