“Weak Narrative, Strong Symbols”: Pop Mart’s Practical Rebellion against and Theoretical Revision of Brand Narrative Theory
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Keywords
brand narrative, symbolic consumption, Pop Mart, de-storytelling
Abstract
Traditional brand narrative theory has long maintained that storytelling is an essential pathway for brands to establish emotional connections with consumers. However, the phenomenon of Pop Mart achieving annual revenues of 10 billion yuan through a “de-storytelling” strategy challenges this hypothesis. Taking Pop Mart as a case study, this research employs a combination of case study and text analysis methods to explore how a “story-less” brand achieves success. Research reveals that Pop Mart employs a “negative space” strategy regarding visual symbols, transforming its IP characters into symbolic spaces that accommodate consumers’ emotional projections and personalized interpretations. The mechanism underlying consumers’ emotional connection to symbols is one of “active projection,” distinct from the “passive transportation” emphasized by traditional narrative theory. The “decontextualized” nature of symbols imbues them with the attributes of social currency capable of cross-cultural circulation. Based on this, the present study proposes a “weak-narrative, strong-symbol” paradigm, revising the brand narrative theory from a framework positing that “storytelling is the sole pathway” to a pluralistic explanatory framework in which “storytelling is one pathway, while strong symbols constitute another.”
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