Narrative Formation and Commercials

How do commercials affect narrative formation? Commercials for a narrative product are seen months before the actual narrative is out. They are designed to create anticipation for the narrative product, and so they inevitably also create expectations for it as well. When consumers actually get the product, therefore, they have already formed an understanding of it that will color their interaction with the narrative.

On a superficial level, this can just mean that people will go into a movie saturated with media hype that the movie will be totally awesome, and will come out thinking that it was indeed pretty awesome, even if they would have hated it absent the hype. And, of course, commercials can totally misrepresent products, creating disappointment in a product that would have been good on its own but doesn't measure up to its own advertising.

But what happens when a commercial does something more subtle, like emphasize one element present in a narrative over others? Can it make consumers go into a narrative more attuned to that element than otherwise, in effect playing a part in constructing the narrative?

I think it's possible. I started thinking about this after going back over the excellently produced commercials for the Xbox360's flagship games, Halo 3 and Gears of War. First, the several Halo 3 commercials from its advertising campaign:









These commercials are brilliant. By setting them decades after the events in the game, as interviews with veterans decades after the battles in the game, they in effect become an afterward to the game. Although they are advertisements, they become part of the narrative. They actually create new narrative content. In addition, they create a new narrative emphasis for the game. The commercials construct an image of Master Chief as a hero that gives the marines hope, drawing them together and giving them the courage to fight on, a shining beacon in the dark hell of war. Decades later, that heroism and that hope is still etched indelibly in the hearts and minds of the veterans.

The game story itself is fast-paced action narrative, where Master Chief goes from crisis to crisis with hardly any moment to catch a breath. There is not a lot of room for character development. The narrative does feature some hints of the heroic image the marines have of the Chief; he is greeted with joy when he comes across a new group of them, and they rally around him. But this is certainly not the narrative's main focus, and it doesn't devote much time to developing the marines, the Chief's relationship with them or the image of the Chief in their popular imagination.

Do these commercials bring out that narrative element more strongly? I think its possible that they do. Every time a marine cries “It's the Chief!” players will probably think about the commercials, and how these marines, elated to see Master Chief, may decades later become the veterans who reminisce about how the Chief gave them the hope they needed to keep fighting. The marines' happiness at meeting Master Chief is an element present in the game, but I think the commercials bring it out much more strongly by linking it to the new narrative content they provide.

And then there's the Gears of War commercials:



Although not as involved as the Halo 3 commercials, this commercial still contributes to narrative formation. In the game story, again an action narrative that moves from one barely contained crisis to the next, Marcus Fenix is portrayed as a gruff, unflappable soldier who accepts that every battle will probably go FUBAR and turn into some fresh hell. A hell he is fully prepared to shoot and hack his way out of. Despite his soul patch, his character is not developed as the kind of person who would wander through the crumbled remains of a once-glorious city, examining broken statues and reflecting on what the world has lost.

This commercial adds that narrative element. Fenix barely comments on the ruined world around him, and is more concerned with using it as cover than pondering it. But as the narrative takes the player from demolished concrete buildings to astonishingly well-preserved beautiful structures that provide a glimpse into the glorious city that once was, players might well remember Fenix morosely examining the ruins of the city, reminding them that there might be another side to his character when he's not flung headlong into battle after battle.

So when commercials act more subtly than just hyping or misrepresenting a narrative, I think they can contribute significantly to narrative formation by emphasizing certain elements present in the narrative that might otherwise not have come out as strongly. And in some cases they can even add new narrative content, acting like an addendum to the main narratie.