A brand storytelling approach to Covid-19's terrorealization: Cartographing the narrative space of a global pandemic

This paper offers a brand storytelling or narratological account of the Covid-19 pandemic's emergence phase. By adopting a fictional ontological standpoint, the virus' deploying media-storyworld is identified with a process of narrative spacing. Subsequently, the brand's personality is analyzed as a narrative place brand. The advanced narrative model aims to outline the main episodes that make up the virus' brand personality as process and structural components (actors, settings, actions, and relationships). A series of deep or ontological metaphors are identified as the core DNA of this place brand by applying metaphorical modeling to the tropic articulation of Covid-19's narrative. The virus is fundamentally identified with terror as a menacing force that wipes out existing regimes of signification due to its uncertain motives, origins, and operational mode. In this context, familiar urban spaces, cultural practices, and intersubjective communications are redefined, repurposed, and reprogrammed. This process is called terrorealization, as the desertification and metaphorical sublation of all prior territorial significations. This study contributes to the narrative sub-stream of place branding by approaching a globally relevant socio-cultural phenomenon from a brand storytelling perspective.