Abstract: The article identifies some typical initiating events occurring in product creation stories and some other genres of marketing storytelling. These are events referring to the initial stage of a product’s life cycle explaining how a product, company or brand was born. Five types of such events are discussed: (1) company/product/brand’s birth through several generations’ hard work, (2) company/product/brand’s birth through experiment or by accident, (3) purchase or present, (4) company/product/brand’s birth as a result of misfortune, and (5) naming of the product. It is argued that marketing stories resemble advertising from the point of view of their functions, allowing companies to achieve two primary goals: (i) of getting noticed by attracting emotional responses from consumers and (ii) of ensuring that the product or brand is remembered and well-liked.
Keywords: storytelling, copywriting, company/product/brand stories, product creation stories, initiating events, product life cycle.
Rhetoric and Communications E-journal, Issue 4, April 2012, http://rhetoric.bg/, ISSN 1314-4464