Brand meaning, which is often used in narrative advertising, is an important value that companies try to build around their loyal consumers. This exploratory research aims to explore brand meanings from consumers’ narratives. This study analyzed 2,382 consumer submitted narratives for a real brand in the food service marketplace. Brand narratives were analyzed using a mixed method content analysis approach by applying Leximancer software to generate key themes and their related concepts. The results indicate brand meaning with some thematic similarities as well as differences when comparing narratives submitted by females and males. This exploratory study introduces analyzing narrative as a way to learn brand meaning and generate future narratives that could be applied to creative message strategy.

At the end of 2011, the Scottish whiskey brand Johnnie Walker launched its first one-country only advertising campaign, the Keep Walking, Brazil, signed by the Brazilian advertising agency Neograma/BBH. In addition to the audiovisual Gigante (giant in English), the campaign included 65 other audiovisuals posted at the brand‟s website, which featured interviews with celebrities, considered by the brand as “Brazilian giants”. Keep Walking, Brazil is an example of advertising campaign that used verbal and non-verbal narratives to engage with its public, by highlighting economic and cultural aspects and making references to the national identity. Thus, this research seeks to investigate Brazilian representations in this advertising campaign, as well as to inquire regarding the premises that talking about culture means talking about relationships dominance. Considering historical disputes of interests from different social groups, in order to understand the Brazilian identity and culture, the hypothesis of this research is that, while the representations in the narratives are shown as innovative and positive, they keep the relationships attached to a Brazilian historical determinism of race and socio-cultural environment. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationships of power that sustain the Brazilian representations in the Keep Walking, Brazil campaign. The specific objectives are: a) To identify the main traces of Brazilian identity based on its recurrent historical representations, especially those present within the media narratives; b)To characterize the narrative of Keep Walking, Brazil, considering the Brazilian cultural context; c) to verify if the Brazilian representations in the narratives reflect the cultural identity; d) To understand how the symbolic forms proposed in the campaign articulate the brand‟s power to control Brazilian cultural aspects within its relationships with Brazilian consumers. This study employed the Thompson‟s method (1995), the depth hermeneutical approach, which helps to interpret the symbolic forms and the originated domination relationships. It was noticed that, at the end of the investigation, Brazilian representations shown in the Keep Walking Brazil campaign did not portray how the country´s cultural identity is actually understood. Therefore, there are still indications of colonialist impressions left in this campaign, even though Brazilian consumers has considered it as a contemporary and innovative representation of national identity. / No final de 2011 a marca de uísque escocesa Johnnie Walker lançou sua primeira campanha publicitária criada especificamente para um país, a Keep walking, Brazil, assinada pela agência paulista Neogama/BBH. Além do audiovisual intitulado Gigante, a campanha contou também com 65 audiovisuais postados no endereço eletrônico da marca, os quais apresentavam entrevistas com personalidades eleitas por ela como gigantes brasileiros. Keep walking, Brazil é um exemplo de campanha publicitária que no propósito de se relacionar econômica e culturalmente com seu público-alvo apresentou narrativas verbais e não-verbais que realizam referências à identidade nacional. Esta pesquisa ocupa-se da investigação das representações de brasilidade presentes na referida campanha. A problemática sustenta-se na premissa de que falar em cultura é falar em relações de domínio e que na busca por se compreender a identidade e a cultura brasileira deve-se considerar um histórico de disputas de interesses de diferentes grupos sociais. Com base nesse pressuposto, apresenta-se como hipótese a ideia de que as representações presentes nas narrativas da referida campanha revelem-se inovadoras e positivas na sua superfície, mas que sob um olhar mais aprofundado mantém relações que são resultantes da concepção simplista de um Brasil cuja história teria sido forjada pelos determinismos de meio e raça. Como objetivo geral pretende-se investigar quais as relações de poder que sustentam as representações da brasilidade na campanha Keep walking, Brazil. Os objetivos específicos ficaram definidos em: a) identificar os principais traços da identidade nacional brasileira com base nas suas representações históricas mais recorrentes, especialmente aquelas presentes nas narrativas midiáticas, empregando-as como parâmetro analítico; b) caracterizar a narrativa da campanha publicitária Keep walking, Brazil, tendo em vista as estratégias de localização orientadas pela cultura nacional brasileira; c) verificar se as representações de brasilidade presentes na campanha atualizam a forma pela qual a identidade cultural do país é compreendida; e d) compreender como as formas simbólicas propostas na campanha articulam relações de poder da marca para com os consumidores brasileiros, dirigindo à identidade nacional a intenção de domínio cultural. Para a análise foi empregada a proposta teórico-metodológica de Thompson (1995), a qual serve à interpretação das formas simbólicas e das relações de dominação delas originadas, a Hermenêutica de Profundidade (HP). Ao findar da investigação, pode-se perceber que as representações da brasilidade presentes na campanha Keep walking Brazil não atualizaram a forma pela qual a identidade cultural do país é compreendida. Neste sentido, persistiram resquícios de um ponto de vista colonialista, embora os consumidores brasileiros a tenham recebido como inovadora em termos de representação da identidade nacional.

面臨到現今社會的激烈競爭，服務創新是應付此環境變化的趨勢之一，但大部分台灣的中小企業主並不知道如何將服務創新實踐在他們的企業中。另一方面，大部分中小企業主並不清楚什麼是服務創新，即使知道服務創新可以改善他們的事業，也缺乏實踐的勇氣。因此，為了改善以上的情況，本篇論文的主旨是引用動機理論來建構小客製化的小故事廣告來激勵中小企業主，並讓他們明白服務創新的好處且有勇氣去實踐。為了達到這個目標，我們使用機率擴展有限狀態機(Probabilistic Extended FSM)作為實踐的方法，利用Dramatica的故事元素和十種創新類型的元素並以三幕劇來建構故事架構，在整合中小企業主的相關資料形成完整的激勵故事。從該激勵故事中，中小企業主可以得到一些啟示，改善岌岌可危的業務以實現他們心中的理想。 / Service innovation is one of the tendencies to cope with the environmental change in the current fierce competition, but the most SMEs in Taiwan don’t know how to put service innovation into practice in their business. On the other hand, the most SMEs don’t know what service innovation is; however, even they know service innovation could rescue their poor business; they have no courage to do so. For these reasons which mentioned above, the aim of this research is to reference the motivation theory and try to generate the mini customized advertising-like to stimulate SMEs and let them know the advantage of service innovation and have confidence to do so. In order to achieve this goal, we use Probabilistic Extended FSM as the implementation approach to integrate the private information of our target SMEs with the story framework which is constituted by the three-act Structure including the Dramatica elements and the elements of ten types of innovation. By this kind of stimulating mini customized advertising-like story, the SMEs could get some enlightenment to ameliorate the precarious business to achieve the ideal of their mind.