The Postmodern Narrative of Drinks

Cross-Disciplinary Course

Date: 2018/01/23-2018/1/25

Prof. Kao participated in designing a cross-disciplinary three-day micro-credit course, “The Postmodern Narrative of Drinks”, which was hosted by College of Liberal Arts of National Cheng Kung University, Uni-President Co., and Creative Delta Project of NCKU.

Course Concept:

Brands in the beverage consumption culture are ubiquitous. Branding no longer is a process of corporate-to-consumer, one-way communication. Instead, consumers actively use brands as symbols to express their identities. Therefore, branding in the post-modern consumption culture needs to engage brands with the consumers in an on-going discourse of finding meanings in everyday life. Based on the above notion, this course started with discussing product concept in a post-modern context and the means of narration as a communication strategy. Various product concepts of Uni-Present’s drinks were shared by three directors from Uni-Present Co., for example, the City Café of 7-Eleven, Uni-Present Mai-Xang milk tea, and various dairy brands. Students were also exposed to three narrative forms including visual art narrative, dance and theatrical narrative, and design narrative. The course aimed to inspire students’ ability to strategically engineer brand stories in a creative and flexible way. Students coming from diversified background participated in this course to create cultural-inspired product concepts for Uni-President.