Open Access

Anastasia Loseva

• The development of social media platforms like YouTube gave marketers a possibility to share advertising content among hundreds of thousands of users globally. Many companies are searching for techniques and tools, which could help to create promotion that would “go viral”, and let the advertisement to be shared actively with low costs. Digital, storytelling advertisement is considered as one of these tools. Storytelling ads are broadly used for increasing brand awareness and establishing connections with the customers. However, the ability of “viral ads” to cross the borders of the countries, forces marketers to consider possible risks, which could occur when the same advertising content is perceived by people from different cultures. This research represents the first attempt to define differences in the narrative composition of advertising videos from different countries and to determine whether or not these differences can influence the attitudes of international viewers. For the purposes of the research, a set of 34 advertising videos from India, Russia, Thailand and the United States was analyzed. The results shows, that that the most significant differences in the narrative structures refer to the number and type of main characters, to the choice between single and multiple stories, and to the amount of brand appearance during the video. Results of the semi-structured interviews shows, that frequency of the brand appearance can significantly influence the perception of the viewers, awake critics of the story flow and impact the desire to share the video. Considering these research findings, it is recommended to pay particular attention on the structure as well as onto the content of the storytelling advertising.