Folklore and Advertising: An Examination of Traditional Themes and Motifs in British Twenty-First-Century Television Advertising Campaigns

Many current TV advertisements contain folktale material, and valuable research into this material has been carried out by Burns,(1) Sullenberger,(2) and Degh.(3) However, since the advertisements are constantly changing and evolving to keep pace with the needs of new products and consumer needs, studies quickly become outdated and can never remain definitive. The topic therefore is revisited here in order to reveal some ways in which folkloric material is being manipulated in order to appeal to consumer audiences of the twenty-first century.