3. The Creative Logic of Transmedia Brand Storytelling

This Chapter considers transmedia storytelling in terms of its creative and strategic principles. It begins by considering emerging approaches to understanding the concept of “the brand” in the digital media era to foreground the perspective that progressive contemporary brands exist in a more fluid and less “top-down” controlled state. In terms of messaging approaches, we trace the efficacy of emotion in the storytelling process as identified in existing research to, in turn, highlight the importance of empathy as a crucial means of fostering ongoing audience relationships. From this point, we analyse scholarship on how brand narratives are created and extended into expansive brand storytelling across platforms to identify the dominant perspectives.