Managing narrative sensemaking in digital storytelling strategies for "Made in Italy " companies

This extended abstract analyzes how "Made in Italy" companies manage the narrative sensemaking of their message within the context of digital storytelling strategies. Those Italian companies that place the "Made in Italy" value at the forefront of their communication plans are included in the 3F sector: Fashion, Food and Furniture. These companies rely on the "Made in Italy" concept as a meaningful narration in their digital storytelling strategies. "Made in Italy"-a concept that has been declared the third most famous brand in the world by the public, stakeholders and a KPMG research , is a well-defined and meaningful 1 tale, applied to every facet of Italian manufacture. The way companies communicate is set in a sign universe which is, in itself, incomplete and natenarrative (Boje, 2001), where communication on products and services offered is constantly attacked on the market by counternarratives (Gabriel, 1995) that aim to delegitimize their value and authenticity. So companies always strive to create coherent stories (Weick, 1995), that are interconnected and petrified (Czarniawska, 2004) in order to allow stakeholders to build a universe of symbols, a meaning, and engage them through their involvement and identification, and lastly by diminishing the informative asymmetry (Martens, Jennings, Jennings, 2007) with the audience by building up meaning. As with the offline, companies' online storytelling feeds on this semiotic incompleteness (Ferraro, 2015). In order to try and increase the level of signification, companies' communications are based on defined meanings. However the ubiquity, interactivity and sharing that are at the core of social networks and blogging platforms allow the antenarra-tives and counternarratives to modify the connections between stories that the company creates and tries to control in order to create meaning from its communication, thus creating a chaotic, vague and meaningless message. Placing a meaningful narrative such as the Made in Italy at the core of one's narration, for a company that sells products manufactured in Italy, brings about the ability to create meaning that can be interpreted by part of the audience and stake-holders. Once the company's narration has been enunciated, those developed by the audience can modify the original narration based on their liquidity, dynamism and transformation. Counter-narrations try to modify the original narrative while antenarratives modify it by reinterpreting it. Lack of control ensues, and the company storyteller tries to steer the narration a certain way in order not to lose its petrified qualities. Online, narrations are destined to change due to the open structure of social networking and blogging platforms, as the goal itself of messages is to be commented on, noticed and shared. These are alive albeit raw narrations that, once entered in digital platforms, grow due to the constant antenarratives and counternarratives brought on by the public and the stakeholders. So ultimately, narration is destined to change. Unlike literary narrations with a definite and monological form (Bruner, 1992), company narrations are fragmented , also defined as 'living stories' (Boje, 2001), set in a wide web of pre-meaning. If on the one hand you place petrified narrative, on the other hand you'll find this type of living stories, dynamic narrations that modify-be it by destroying or integrating them-the petrified quality of narratives. The thesis brought on by Czarniawska (2004), for whom companies' petrified narratives are slow to change and repeat themselves, continue over time and on different platforms, are worth less today due to the speed of messages signification change in social networks and blogging / contents sharing platforms. Storytelling is always unanimous in this environment and authorship doesn't involve just the company: once a message has been posted, the company relinquishes control over it (Henderson, 2015). A company that focuses on Made in Italy creates a meaning as much petrified as possible so that it can direct coherent and defined messages towards the public and stakeholders and lessen informative asymmetry.