Examining a hyper-human virtual brand ambassador as a brand personification strategy

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explores the usage of Ella, a virtual influencer, as a dedicated ambassador for the brand Disney Japan. Identifying what storytelling strategies are being used by the hyper-human brand owned virtual brand ambassadors and how these build upon the endorsed brand’s existing personification.

Design/methodology/approach: An abductive thematic analysis was carried out on the images of 212 posts across the complete active period of Ella, a virtual brand ambassador for Disney Japan.

Findings: Brands that use hyper-human brand-dedicated virtual ambassadors can produce native social media content. This content situated in either the physical or virtual space take on different roles in the virtual brand ambassador’s connection with the audience. Storytelling of the everyday allows for relatability to be established, whereas storytelling using fantasy and surrealism allow for harnessing of imagination. They both allow for the easy integration of brand iconography.

Practical implications: Brands seeking to utilise social media content for storytelling can use brand-dedicated virtual ambassadors to both tell new stories as well as to act as a route to integrate existing brand stories, with the potential to elicit collective nostalgia. The use of these virtual entities also allows the creative flexibility of content encompassing both reality and virtuality.

Originality/value: The work contributes to the emerging literature on hyper-human virtual brand ambassadors providing a critical case study into the content repertoire available to the brands utilising them and crucially identifying key storytelling techniques used within their posts on Instagram.