“Touching with heart, reasoning by truth!” The impact of brand cues on mini-film advertising effect

With the rapid development of online advertising, mini-film advertising (MA) built on short plotlines has received substantial attention from enterprises. Despite their trending popularity, enterprises must consider how to achieve their advertising goals without compromising the independence and completeness of the MA narrative structure. In accordance with narrative transportation theory, 151 university students were divided into groups to explore the effect of brand cues (temporal and content cues) in MA for this study. The results indicated that a significant difference was observed among various groups regarding the influence of brand cues on advertising effect, the interaction effect of temporal cues (the beginning versus end of advertising), and content cues (brand name versus brand name with interpretative words), and the way transportation mediated the influence of brand cues on advertising effectiveness. Loneliness was used as a moderator for the relationship between brand cues and advertising effect. For people with a high level of loneliness, the brand name and interpretative words appearing at the beginning of the advertisement activated a positive advertising effect. These results can serve as a reference to help enterprises develop MA strategies.