Sport a storytelling : dlaczego marki sięgają po wątki sportowe?

Abstract

Sport in storytelling. Why do brands adopt sport into narratives? Many brands adopt sports into their storytelling campaigns. This trend can be noticed even if a brand’s operations or its products are not related to sport. Nevertheless, it seems to be an attractive platform to communicate with the audience and present specific values. The purpose of this paper is to explain the popularity of sport themes in brand’s storytelling. To unveil this notion, the relationship between sport industry, global business and the influence of sport on social processes is analysed. By examining the impact of sport rivalry on an individual, brands’ motives and the phenomenon of building stories based on sport events or athletes’ lives are explained. This study seeks to describe mechanisms that are used by brands, which strive to mark their presence in people’s lives through storytelling. The methodological approach taken in this paper is a mixed methodology based on critical analysis of existing studies in philosophy, economy, sociology, psychology, and examination of Procter&Gamble’s communication case study. The first part investigates the theoretical reasons for adopting sport into narratives to influence society and individuals. The next section proceeds to an example of the brand which based its storytelling communication on sport event and themes. The results of this study show multidimensional motives and benefits of adopting sport into storytelling. These are connected to different areas of human life and remain critical for brands’ strategies. This examination also confirms high popularity of sport motives in communication of brands that do not belong directly to sport industry and whose offer is not associated with sport at all.