The power of narrative images: a visual semiotic analysis of consumer and brand messages in social media

The fight for consumer attention and persuasion has never been so competitive. The content overload in (and beyond) social media has shortened consumer’s attention spans, challenging brands to generate content that can be easily retained by viewers. Visuals seem to have the ability to capture consumer attention and convey information quickly. However, as content managers augment their use of visuals in social media, recent studies suggest that the simple inclusion of any visual in brand-related messages does not necessarily translate into gaining attention and persuading consumers to buy a brand or product (SocialQuant 2017). An effective brand-related message should include visuals that are able to tell a compelling story rather than simply pairing text information. Visual stories or narratives are fundamental to ensure that brand-related messages are passed to consumers in a meaningful and memorable way. Visual narratives about brands can be generated both by users and companies. User-generated content, such as consumer photographs (e.g., selfies) publicly shared on social media, works as a visual review platform, showing other consumers how brands and products are used in realtime by actual consumers. Whether user- or company-generated, 90% of content is communicated to consumers through visuals (TechCo 2015). Despite top brands recognize the importance of consumer storytelling through images, there is limited understanding of how visualised stories trigger consumer reactions (e.g., eWOM, liking and sharing). Inspired by visual semiotics, that is the theory of signs and symbols that analyses how visual images communicate a message (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006) and adopting a multi-method approach that involves experiments and content analysis of images, the aim of this dissertation is to understand how visual elements in user- and company-generated messages are put together into meaningful patterns that transmit compelling stories to consumers.