Constructing Brand Memory Through Melodrama in Greek Advertising: Jumbo’s 2019 Christmas Commercial “The Sailor”

Nikolaos Aletras

doi:10.5281/zenodo.21597172

Nikolaos Aletras School of Film, Faculty of Fine Arts, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21597172

Keywords: Cultural memory, melodrama, advertising, brand memory, Greek audiovisual culture.

Abstract

This article examines the Greek Christmas advertisement Jumbo antistrofi metrisis 2019 - O naftikos! (Jumbo αντίστροφη μέτρηση 2019 - Ο ναυτικός!; Jumbo Countdown 2019 - The Sailor!) as a cultural text situated at the intersection of cinema, television, online video, and participatory digital culture. It argues that the commercial does more than promote products: it appropriates recognizable codes of family and maritime melodrama in order to activate memories of childhood, festive time, family absence, sacrifice, and expectation. The theoretical framework brings together memory studies and genre theory, drawing on Halbwachs’s collective memory, Assmann’s cultural memory, Nora’s lieux de mémoire, Erll’s intermedial circulation, Hirsch’s postmemory, and Landsberg’s prosthetic memory, alongside Altman’s semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic model, Neale’s account of repetition and difference, and the contributions of Brooks, Gledhill, Elsaesser, and Williams to melodrama theory.

Methodologically, the study combines qualitative interpretive analysis, close reading of the video, and an indicative reading of public YouTube comments as evidence of reception. The article shows that the advertisement constructs brand memory not merely as logo recall but as culturally embodied mnemonic attachment: the brand becomes linked to emotional schemas recognized as “our own,” as part of a collective and popular experience. Its effectiveness lies precisely in its capacity to transform a commercial promise into a narrative of emotional and moral recognition.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Aaker, D. A. (1991). Managing brand equity. New York: Free Press.

Aletras, N. (2020). Streaming and Digital Distribution. Athens: Aigokeros

Altman, R. (1984). A semantic/syntactic approach to film genre. Cinema Journal, 23(3), 6–18. Altman, R. (1999). Film/genre. London: British Film Institute.

Assmann, J. (2008). Communicative and cultural memory. In A. Erll & A. Nünning (Eds.), Cultural memory studies: An international and interdisciplinary handbook (pp. 109–118). Berlin: De Gruyter.

Brooks, P. (1976). The melodramatic imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Elsaesser, T. (1972). Tales of sound and fury: Observations on the family melodrama Monogram, 4, 2–15.

Erll, A. (2008). Cultural memory studies: An introduction. In A. Erll & A. Nünning (Eds.), Cultural memory studies: An international and interdisciplinary handbook (pp. 1–15). Berlin: De Gruyter.

Gledhill, C. (1987). The melodramatic field: An investigation. In C. Gledhill (Ed.), Home is where the heart is: Studies in melodrama and the woman’s film (pp. 5–39). London: BFI.

Halbwachs, M. (1992). On collective memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hirsch, M. (1997). Family frames: Photography, narrative, and postmemory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Hirsch, M. (2008). The generation of postmemory. Poetics Today, 29(1), 103–128.

Holt, D. B. (2004). How brands become icons. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1–22.

Landsberg, A. (2004). Prosthetic memory: The transformation of American remembrance in the age of mass culture. New York: Columbia University Press.

Neale, S. (2000). Genre and Hollywood. London: Routledge.

Nora, P. (1989). Between memory and history: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–24.

Williams, L. (1998). Melodrama revised. In N. Browne (Ed.), Refiguring American film genres (pp. 42–88). Berkeley: University of California Press.

ONLINE / AUDIOVISUAL SOURCES

Jumbo Stores. Jumbo antistrofi metrisis 2019 - O naftikos! [Jumbo Countdown 2019 - The Sailor!]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnnrf4PmF0Y

Public user comments posted beneath the official YouTube video of the advertisement, used indicatively as evidence of reception and mnemonic activation.