Brand Narration and Fashion Films

Abstract

Starting from the new approaches of brand communication in New Millennium Era, we show why, according to us, the fashion film is a powerful tool in defining and strengthening the visual identity of a fashion brand. Our analysis is focused on ordering the different kinds of narration in this special category of on-line videos and we discover that they work about the three fundamental parameters of the Visual Identity Model. The New Communication Panorama  Brand communication has been showing signs of major and radical changes since the late 90s', when it became clear and prominent that the past communication format was rapidly becoming outdated. The convergent forces, which led to this trend, can be summarized in three main points: (1) The first is the growing advertising crush on the traditional media, resulting in increased costs and competition, while at the same time decreasing the consumer's attention. In fact, the latter is increasingly worn out and intolerant of the continuous advertising blitz, thus developing new defence tools. (2) The second refers to the consumer himself who, in the postmodern era, claims with increasing strength and incisiveness his active role in the branding process in any market, demanding the acknowledgement of the individuality from the brands. (3) Last but not least, the massive spread of new media, which contributed to make the brand and individual-consumer relationship more democratic, rebalancing the importance and impact of both: Internet allows any brand to directly listen to its public, without mediations of any kind, and any individual can turn himself into an influencer in the buying process. We might even say that more and more often the individual-consumer is able to dictate his own wishes and somehow impose them on the brand. All these forces the brands to review the way they face the market. As far as especially concerns the communication, the brand starts being aware of the changes in the way people communicate with each other and now brands have to adapt to harmoniously fit in the new contexts: especially with the mobile, the users are constantly connected and make use of any type of content in a completely different context. According to kpcb.com website, in 2015 the time spent on mobile devices exceeded that spent on desktop. The role of the advertising communication has also partially changed: advertising has always been parasitic, yesterday as today. In the past, however, it tried to exploit the attention of the medium user, for example interrupting him while reading a newspaper or viewing a TV program, which is why there was talk of advertising breaks and the approach used was that of interruption marketing. We still find today on TV