Semiotics

• Consumers


  Shop for meanings, not stuff
• Brands


  • Semiotic entities as they are built from a structure of complex and interrelated meanings that evolve over time
  • Polysemic symbols
• Sign


  Something that conveys a meaning, formed by a signifier (material form) and a signified (idea/meaning)
• Relationship between signifier and signified

  Arbitrary and dictated by culture
• Brand equity


  Financial value of goods derived from intangible brand benefits that exceed the good's use value
• Brand meanings


  Deliver benefits to consumers in the form of perceptions of quality, symbolic relationships, vicarious experiences, or sense of identity
• The extent to which consumers recognize, internalize, and relate to brand meanings has tangible impact on the firm's financial performance
• Brand meaning


  The condition of possibility for creating brand value
• Semiotics


  • The social-science discipline devoted to the study of signs, texts, discourses in a cultural perspective
  • The ensemble of signifying operations at work in a sign system, such as a brand, an advertising text, or a retail setting
• Semiosis


  The dynamic of meaning production
• Semiology


  A synonym of semiotics when referring to the science of signs
• Semiotics


  • Exceeds the rhetorical or content analysis of meaning because it sheds light on the cultural codes that structure the phenomenal world into semantic categories and implicates consumers in the brand world
  • Can be used to refocus, extend, or reposition the brand, or to develop new products or new segments and markets
• In North America, semiotics research is typically commissioned at the end of a strategic decision-making process to develop creative communication strategy
• Semiotic research should form the cornerstone of brand equity management, since brands are essentially sign systems that contribute to profitability
• Semiotics


  • Adapts linguistic theory to the study of nonverbal signs and symbols and anchors them in the culture of consumers
  • Transcends the analysis of communication per se and can be used strategically to align the brand with its heritage and positioning and clarify competitive distinctions
• Content analysis


  A methodology used by social scientists to develop hypotheses about a market or social group, track changes in social trends over time, and draw attention to the underlying attitudes, values, and political tensions within a culture
• Advertising is a sort of "conduit" for transferring meanings from the world of culture to the world of consumer goods
• Culture influences advertising, but at the same time advertising helps shaping culture
• Marketing semiotics research process

  • Involves collecting and decoding data from consumers, popular culture, and the brand history
  • Data is classified into groups ordered in a hierarchy of larger to smaller units of meaning, beginning with the broad cultural categories associated with the consumer target
  • Cultural categories are analyzed further into emotional territories that bind the brand to the lifestyles and values of consumers
• Consumer Brandscape


  A system of interrelated elements which reflects the integration of culture, consumer experiences, and the communication function for the brand
• Binary Analysis


  1. Identify the key benefits consumers associate with a product category

  2. Understand how a specific brand is positioned in relation to those benefits
• Luiss Marketing Semiotics Chapter 2 Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli April 8th, 2024
• Luiss Marketing Semiotics Case-study Citroën Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli April 8th, 2024
• In 2010, the French car manufacturer Citroën launches an advertising campaign to promote the new DS3 model
• By plotting binary pairs on a grid, we can identify the positioning of brands and reveal unoccupied spaces of meaning in which competitive brands or brand extensions might be positioned
• New Citroën DS3 model


  • Keeping the main features that identify the Citroën heritage
  • Modern
  • Innovative
  • Represents a window towards the future

  
• Symbolic consumption


  Goods often transcend their functional purpose and have symbolic value for consumers
• Anti-retro slogan


  Aimed at underlining the drive towards novelty and innovation
• The controversial campaign uses old montages of two famous celebrities, John Lennon and Marylin Monroe, to convey the anti-retro message
• Citroën positions itself


  In a space where the "retro" becomes an inspiration to create something new and unique, just like the new Citroën model

  
• Brands are defined by their symbolic value for consumers, since brand meanings differentiate competitors in the marketplace and target the unmet symbolic needs of consumers
• Consumption in the social order


  • Consumers engage in symbolic consumption from the moment they use goods as signs
  • The meaning and force of consumption are woven into the shared values, beliefs, and relationships that structure society
• Citroën


  • Founded by André Citroën in 1919
  • Historic brand of the automotive industry
  • Pioneer of technological innovations
  • Known for its iconic style all over the word

  
• Consumption reflects and regulates the cultural conventions, myths, and social order of a society
• Citroën logo


  Symbolizes a particular type of gear cut, called a "chevron", which the founder saw during a trip to Poland

  
• Structuralism


  • Based on the assumption that meaning production is a system of relationships codified by culture
  • These semiotic relationships actually structure, rather than mirror, reality
• Roland Barthes: 'The D.S. - the 'Goddess' - has all the features of one of those objects from another universe which have supplied fuel for the neomania of the eighteenth century and that of our own science- fiction: the Déesse is first and foremost a new Nautilus'
• Structural semiotics


  • A form of critical analysis based on the proposition that the world as we know it is structured, like language, into smaller to larger units of meaning that relate to each other in an organized system
  • Since marketing relies on collective perceptions and behaviors in the marketplace, structural semiotics can be important for developing products, positioning brands, and creating advertising
• DS Citroën


  • Represents a new phenomenology of assembling: from a world where elements were simply welded, to a world where elements are juxtaposed and hold together by sole virtue of their wondrous shape
  • Exaltation of glass surfaces, which are vast walls of air and space
  • The winged logo seems to represent the passage from the category of propulsion to that of spontaneous motion, from that of the engine to that of the organism (humanized art)
• Structural Anthropology


  • The collective unconscious: conscious phenomena are the product of unconscious, universal structures or codes
  • The deep structure of culture and the general codes: culture resembles language inasmuch as it is organized by means of codes structuring the collective unconsciousness
  • The cultural system: culture gave rise to social structures, rather than the other way around