Moralizing narratives is the new branding How moral discourses can be translated to and establish common-sense values via contemporary advertising

The increasing importance in the language of advertising and marketing are facing morality issues. Brands are moving from being exclusive as a marketing strategy to being inclusive, building and communicating their brand image for every human being. The shift of advertising companies increasingly offering its narratives as a form of moral guidance is trending, and the moral characteristics and interplay of advertising and how these moral lessons can be translated and communicated to consumers in the best way is a new field of research. Different streams of literature have been investigated for this research, each conceptualizing consumer morality, moral advertising, ethical consumption and inclusivity in another way. Some relevant clarifications about moral courage, narrative ethics, moral rationalization and ethical consumption were given and the concepts of inclusivity and diversity, the trend of inclusive marketing, how inclusivity is communicated and the trend of changemaking were discussed. The goal of this research was to create a system of interpretation of moral evaluation to discover how moral discourses can be translated to and establish common-sense values and mass loyalty at the same time. How ideologies are represented were examined within specific examples from contemporary advertising, in order to determine how the system of moral evaluation supports the moralistic shift in advertising and provide a valuable answer to the research question. By combining semiotics and thematic analysis research methods, and making use of an interdisciplinary theoretical approach, this thesis empirically investigates how instances of consumer morality are articulated through discursive practices. Semiotic complemented the visual thematic analysis of the complete data set of video advertisements, which consisted of fifty YouTube videos of different brands from different industries. The findings indicate the communication of inclusivity plays a big role in the overall brand attitude and ethical consumption, and how brands can connect consumers to and make them aware of the notion of a specific moral issue. Furthermore, the potential power of moral imagination to enable companies to act ethically in society, and be able to be both ethical and successful by visualizing alternatives, was confirmed. This research underlines a new tendency in contemporary advertising, as it seems that there is currently a notable shift happening toward portraying more realistic perceptions of human beings. Lastly, this research provides additional evidence of the existence of issues and ambiguity regarding inclusivity, and enhances understanding of the inclusive advertising trend in response to global moral issues.