Keywords

1 Introduction

Fashion films are among the strategic tools used by fashion brands to build their own imagery [4]. They ensue from the contamination of diverse semantic systems (cinema, fashion and the Internet), each with a distinctive cultural and experiential heritage that contribute to elevate their overall value and communicative complexity [5].

These web-native short films forge new aesthetic forms. They keep the traditional exploration of the new frontiers of beauty alive, thus breaking the barriers between what is well established and what has turned into a cliché. Alongside this, however, fashion films support new value-based contents of the fashion houses, mapping the new luxury promises out. Nowadays, most fashion houses tell stories, whose recurring driving force are social issues. Moreover, the narrative patterns of this storytelling are far from those adopted by the traditional advertising “commercials”, mainly due to different narrative roles played by the product and their goals [6]. In fact, fashion brands make a large number of such digital videos, whose primary objective is sharing the fashion house’s imagery to boost their followers’ engagement [7]. These new brand narratives generate ever-changing stories, but still attributable to an easily recognizable content-based universe. The Bellhop by Gucci (2022), directed by Tom Newman, is a case in point. Its aesthetic is strongly reminiscent of Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by Wes Anderson; this fashion film promotes the digital gym created by Gucci – Alessandro Michele to encourage gamers’ physical and psychological well-being. Continuing the legacy of this brand’s philosophy, the imagery is always surreal and the value promoted is the quest for fun and well-being in the name of inclusion.

Fashion films can be inscribed among the forms of online brand entertainment [8]: indeed they stage a strong interaction between entertainment contents and brand world and reinforce the bond between Arts and fashion. Since the explosion of this new communication tool is connected to internet and social media growth, Online Brand Communities play a crucial role in defining their success or failure. Being a product meant for the web, the contribution given by netizens [9] in terms of engagement is vital [2, 10, 11].

OBCs [Online Brand Communities] [12] are the digital evolution of the traditional brand communities; they are both made up of people who claim to be great experts and followers of the brand, and who see the brand as the maker of tangible and intangible products. The main difference between the two concerns the purpose. The former expresses the commercial nature of their raison d'être, while the virtual communities are enlivened and driven by the exchange of contents, interests and passions referred to the value-based brand world.

OBCs live and thrive in a digital environment, where they encounter brands and their tales on distinct social media. This drives the narrative approach adopted by brands, namely fashion brands, known as transmedia branding [14, 15]. Starting from the transmedia storytelling theorized by Jenkins [16], it aims to strengthen the engagement of a brand’s audience by following the dynamics of new media [3].

Transmedia storytelling is a process where, starting from just one narrative plot, many stories are created by breaking the barriers of each single medium; they offer different points of view but each story has to be attributable to the same nucleus of contents [17]. When this process is launched, the source of narration can be both the sender and the receiver, in a contamination and blend of roles. It is a creative practice using distinctive media and different environments, which is available to an unlimited number of content creators; it does not only work on the internet, but social media plays a strategic role, because of its interactive nature and great popularity among people. Negri [18] underlines another crucial aspect of transmedia storytelling: it implies working contemporarily on two different levels: narration and channels. Narration is now disconnected from the tale: narration shapes an idea of “world of stories” where each single story is placed in a recognizable context. In this manner, different factors coming from different channels generate distinctive and connoted narrative worlds.

Consequently, transmedia branding results in constellations of varied brand stories depending on unique, distinctive and peculiar contents of each brand’s visual identity [19]. A communicative system that unceasingly promotes, fosters and shares new narratives [12]. As Moin points out [3], new brand stories intend to achieve “the hearts of their customers” through brand experience, brand engagement and brand consumption.

In fashion market, Online Brand Communities (OBCs) [13] represent the context where addicted or simply passionate fashion crowds can share their interests, without restrictions in terms of time or place, following the online brand activities. OBCs embody the transformation of brand fans [20], who transition from being consumers to digital consumers by developing a digital consumer culture [21, 22]. Such individuals seek and consume tangible as much as digital products; the web-based audience turns from target into a medium that enables brand communication [4].

Penetrating these communities essentially means acknowledging their identity to assess their impact on the formative dynamics of branded contents: analysing how internet users morph into brand communities and brand supporters is a critical aspect of this research.

These dynamics can be commonly observed on social media and they are studied by academics like Brogi, S., Calabrese, A., Campisi, D., Capece, G., Costa, R., Di Pillo [13]; Cunningham, Craig [2]; Du Plessis [12]; Moin [3]. However the consequential relationship between fashion films and OBCs activities has not yet been focused; the leading question is how the OBCs relate to different forms and fashion films, fuelling the brand imagery.

2 Research Purpose: The Study of Interaction Between Fashion Films and OBCs (Online Brand Communities)

This study aims to relate fashion films to the communities of followers, exploring the key drivers that give rise to the co-creation patterns of branded content.

Therefore, the research purpose is twofold. The first objective is to analyse fashion films, detecting their distinct languages and narratives forms by approaching a semiotic perspective, to outline recurring and structural patterns. The second objective is to identify the OBCs profiles and prove their roles in the (cultural) production of branded contents, linking them to the manifold forms of fashion tales.

Fashion films are examined according to multiple levels of interpretation, using the levels of generation of meaning by Greimas [23] and the narrative structures by Eco [24].

As for the level of manifestation [23], this will be subject to careful examination through a further distinction that may lead to different types of engagement – the filmic language [25], having its own grammar and lexicon, and the iconographic language, set by precise aesthetic codes creating different imageries.

The latter pertains to a research conducted by two American scholars, Phillips and McQuerrie [26], before the rise and growth of the empire of digital images spread by social media such as Instagram. Their analysis focused on ad campaigns of paper magazines (i.e. Vogue USA), and explored how different languages develop different types of engagement. The two authors thereby proved the types and levels of engagement generated by the manifold languages of fashion advertising. This research project therefore aims to scale up the scope of the observation by updating the analysis and contemplating the digital language dictated by the web; how community comments possibly affect the creation of branded contents is also scrutinized.

Starting from the fashion film categories outlined, based on the narrative languages and forms, we proceed with the analysis of the existing relationship between them and the types of engagement they develop within the OBCs. Familiarizing with the profile and internal dynamics of OBCs allows for some considerations on levels and types of engagement. This connection is made possible by the use of netnographic approach [27]. In fact, investigating the interactions among netizens and between netizens and devices enables the comprehension of the content-generating processes. Keywords and recurring themes within the OBCs will be detected, thanks to specific algorithms, with the objective of defining autonomously generated micro-areas of content. Likewise, aim of this study is to identify the types of interaction established with the brand and its consequent possible response.

Data collection and processing aimed at mapping the main OBCs profiles, supported by systemic algorithms, will be the core of this phase. The research model proposed by Martinez-Lopez, Aguilar-Illescas, Molinillo, Anaya-Sanchez, Coca-Stefaniak and Esteban-Millat [28] represents one point of advancement.

3 Methodology

The research unfolds in 4 phases:

  1. 1)

    In the first phase, the analysis of some fashion films is completed. The enormous quantity of online contents promoted by fashion brands requires a precise definition of the research scope, which could be widened and completed in later stages. This initial stage focuses on analysing fashion films (available on the main social media platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook) belonging to two well-established fashion houses and two brands of emerging designers whose fashion symbolizes the avant-garde. The two leading brands are chosen based on the two types of narrative structure they develop, adopting a Greimas’ semiotic approach [23, 29, 30]. Following this theory, there are brands that develop state of being stories and brands that opt for state of doing stories, being the latter a real novelty in the luxury market.

    A set number of fashion films is explored for each year, making a data-driven choice.

    A semiotic analysis of fashion films produced in the last ten years is conducted for each brand, making particular reference to Greimas’ generative semiotics [23] and the levels of meaning generation together with Eco’s interpretative semiotics for the distinction between open and closed stories [6, 24]. Fashion films are therefore analysed according to the following elements:

    • Filmic language [5]

    • Aesthetic codes [31]

    • Narrative mode: state of being/state of doing [29]

    • Deep values, with special reference to the Greimas’ veridictory square by [23, 29]

    • Narrative structures: open stories/closed stories [6]

      This way, two macro-levels of interpretation emerge. The first, depending on language, and the second, depending on the brand narrative.

  2. 2)

    In the second phase, the OBCs analysis will begin for each fashion film and brand. Using a netnographic [27] perspective and a quantitative (data-oriented) approach (supported by a data analytics company), the definition of systemic algorithms will follow, which would allow to:

    • Outline and profile OBCs (through top followers analysis)

    • Record the level of engagement (data: comments and likes)

    • Assess the interaction (if any) among netizens and between netizens and brands, followed by a reflection on the contents proposed and shared within the community.

  3. 3)

    The third phase will study the relationship between types of fashion films and OBCs. This phase will try to draw conclusion on what has been observed to determine:

    • Whether a correspondence between the fashion film language and the netizen engagement may exist.

    • What type of response/engagement the different types of storytelling generate and whether data able to confirm an improved effectiveness of one over the other may exist.

    • What is the role played by fashion films, within a transmedia branding strategy, in sharing and co-generating brand imagery.

  4. 4)

    The fourth and last phase envisages the potential development of interviews conducted with some top followers, aiming at proving the findings and get new inspirations for further research enhancements.

This research project is being developed and will be completed in two years (2023–2024) at the IULM University of Milan (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

The research structure.

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