The Emotional Side of Strategic Communication: A Narrative Analysis of Brand Activist Campaigns and the Young Public's Emotional Response

Abstract: This thesis analyzes how the young public feels about communication efforts that seek to emotionally appeal to them, by investigating the example of brand activist campaigns. By applying narrative theory, the study examines how these campaigns are structured to evoke emotions and how the young public emotionally responds to them. This way, the thesis has a holistic approach to the emotional side of strategic communication by examining both the strategic and receiving side of brand communication. The empirical material was collected from three activist campaigns and four focus group discussions with international students enrolled at Lund University. Through a qualitative narrative analysis of the activist campaigns, findings demonstrated that they use similar storytelling techniques to strategically communicate the campaign narratives, to evoke feelings such as inspiration and encouragement. From the receiving side, the young public’s emotions were revealed once they started to discuss the campaigns. By doing so, a broader range of emotions were evoked and conflicted with one another. Further findings demonstrate that the most typical emotions evoked by the brand activist campaigns were skepticism, hopefulness, and relatability. The study shows that emotions arise when the public discusses brand activist campaigns, which is crucial for the improvement of communication efforts and for the understanding of how to strategically communicate messages.