George rossolatos seminar on branding, brand equity, brand semiotic models and research methods part...

George Rossolatos MSc, MBA, PhD//disruptiVesemiOtics// email: [email protected]://uni-kassel.academia.edu/georgerossolatos

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Danesi’s Brand Semiotics: The poetic logic• A brand is a logical construct, a name evoking an unconscious system of thought

• The logical reasoning used is hardly ‘rational’ ; it is based on the poetic sense built into words

• Brands are essentially metaphors (Vico), they are part of a ‘social logic’ as unconscious system of reasoning

and inference that is tied to the rhetorical value of brand names.

• Poetic logic is evidence that we use our imagination in tandem with our senses to understand the world

• BRANDS ARE FIRST AND FOREMOST IMAGINARY CONSTRUCTS, YET OF PRACTICAL

RELEVANCE AND CARRYING VALUES THAT MAY BE LOGICALLY ARTICULATED

• It is no wonder that brand names have become metonymically sign-posts for entire product categories

• Anyone got any post-its? ---- Do you have small pieces of paper for note-taking?

• Google it --- Look for information about topic X by using a web-based search–engine

• To hoover --- To clean carpets

• Pass me a Kleenex ------ Give me a tissue

•

•

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Danesi’s Brand Semiotics: The connotative index

• Brands may be viewed as signification systems, that is culture-specific meanings and

attendant mental constructs that are evoked by a brand.

• Brands as signs enter into relations with other signs in a culture and gain their ‘value’

from them.

• The connotative index: The higher the number of connotations a brand generates, the

greater its psychological force

• Also see Keller’s richness of brand associations BUT

• RISK OF DILUTING BRAND DNA AND CORE BRAND PROMISE

Danesi’s Brand Semiotics: Brands as texts• Text: A ‘putting together’ of signifying elements (words, sounds, images, etc.) to produce a meaningful

message .

• The form brands are given in advertising campaigns is called their textuality

• 4 levels of textuality:

• Surface text: It identifies a product and presents a situation or image, while unfolding as an

action sequence.

• Subtext: The generation of sensations through synesthetic effects that are produced from the

interaction between two or more signs(e.g., an ice-cube rubbing a neck)

• Intertext: Connotations that emerge from signs that are employed in ads by virtue of their

intertextual embeddedness (e.g., familiar representations that carry conventionalized meaning due

to their recurrent portrayal in films)

• Metatext : The creation of different kinds of texts for each medium which results in an overall text

or ‘metatext’

• Note: This notion also surfaces in the relevant literature as transmedia storytelling

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Floch’s Marketing Semiotics

• Floch pioneered in the application of Greimasian structuralist semiotics in marketing

theory and research

• His main work Marketing Semiotics (2001) that exemplifies his approach which is

complemented by Visual Identities (2000), even though not furnishing a coherent

branding theory, is interspersed with insightful conceptual and methodological

remarks borne out of his active involvement in applied marketing semiotic research.

Floch’s approaches to branding research

• Expanded Greimasian semiotics to the visual territory (logos, ad signs)

• Applied Greimasian structuralist semiotics to services (banking, metro), retail

(Carrefour), fmcg’s (pharmaceuticals), durables (Citroen)

• Adapted the semiotic square’s binarist rationale to both depth and surface

structure readings

• Multimodal reading grids of packaging and advertising elements (effets de sens)

• Universal axiological mapping by projection on the veridictory square


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Criticism of Floch’s adaptation of the structuralist depth grammaticalbinarist rationale to visual surface discursive structures• Floch, by analyzing mostly print ads in the pharmaceutical category of psychotropicmedication found that “this discourse had not been put together in a haphazard way, butaccording to a very specific encoding, the awareness of which enabled us to avoid takingfor granted the incorporation of such details as the stable nature of a line, the dissymmetry ofa form, the graphics of a design or the contrast of two values” (Floch 2001).

• By drawing on recurrent stylistic patterns Floch identified twelve distinctive visual categoriesin psychotropic drug advertising, such as “clear vs dark”, “shaded vs contrasting”

• However, binarist pairs in the visual sign are not as clear-cut, as Sonesson argues.

• “Oppositions may be in absentia, or true oppositions, or in praesentia, or contrasts.Thus, in pictures there is no obvious equivalent to the system of (constitutive)oppositions present in the phonological and semantic organisation of verballanguage”

• Over-reliance on the binarist model• As against Rastier’s criticisms of the binarist semiotic square (developed incollaboration with Greimas)• By implication, not taking into account advances in structuralist semiotics in theconnectionist territory

Floch’s Marketing Semiotics

• According to Floch (2001), the first principle is that “the thrust of semiotics is thedescription of conditions pertaining to the production and apprehension of meaning”

• The second principle (the so-called immanence principle) is that “semioticians lookclosely at the system of relations formed by the invariants of these productions andapprehensions of meaning by analyzing specific components known as signs” (Floch2001).

• “Semiotics seeks to work from texts, to work on and in that very place where signssignify” (Floch 2001)

• According to Floch, textual semiotics lies at the heart of marketing research


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Floch’s adaptation (?) of Greimas’s generativetrajectory of signification• Based on the generative trajectory of signification a brand acquires meaning bypassing through different levels or structures, viz., depth, semio-narrative and discursivestructures.

• “Semio-narrative structures consist of the entire set of virtualities the enunciatingsubject has at its disposal; it is that supply of values and programmes of action fromwhich he or she can draw in order to tell his or her story or speak of any given topic”(Floch 2001).

• Discursive structures “correspond to the selection and ordering of these virtualities.They relate to the choice of a specific referential universe” (Floch 2001).

• Despite positing the generative trajectory as generic marketing semiotic blueprint,Floch progressively distanced himself from the generativist rationale of the trajectory infavor of surface structural reading grids, while viewing depth structures as effets de sens(effects of meaning) of verbo-visual surface structures.

•Piecemeal adaptation of Greimas’s generative trajectory of signification; waveringbetween early and mid-period Greimasian theory.

Limitations in Floch’s structuralist semioticapproach• Adaptation of Greimas’s (Propp’s) semio-narrative typologies and modalities

without taking into account the particularities of branding discourse as genre

• Significant differences from the literary genre, which was the primary field of

application of Greimasian semiotics

• Extrapolation of universal value territories from a specific brand/category

perspective (CRF/retail)

• Not taking into account competition in most of the analyses


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Floch’s Marketing Semiotics: CNS

• Floch imports directly in his applied marketing semiotic analyses Greimas’s canonicalnarrative schema

• The canonical narrative schema constitutes an a priori model for the organization of anarrative’s structure into four phases,

• contract, competence, performance, sanction

•The four phases of the canonical narrative schema are intertwined in a relationship oflogical presupposition and accompanied by four requisite modalities (see Greimas andCourtés 1979).

• In order to accomplish a performance, an actant must be equipped with thedeontic modality (i.e., having-to-do [devoir-faire]), but also with wanting-to-do[vouloir-faire] and being capable-of-doing [pouvoir]; in order to be capable of doingone must possess the epistemic modality (i.e., knowing-how-to-do [savoir-faire])•The completion of a narrative action is deemed successful if it leads to sanction,whereby a receiver (destinataire) recognizes the message of a sender (destinateur)as truthful/veridictory.

The original conception of CNS


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Criticisms of Floch’s adaptation of the CNS in the analysis ofadvertising discourse from a brand generativist POV• Brand discourse varies markedly from literary discourse in terms of motivation andintentionality behind the text’s manifest structure, as well as in terms of discursive style.

• The invariant functions and characters that were discovered by Propp and adopted byGreimas may not be uncritically assumed as deductive principles for the semio-narrativereconstruction of an ad film.

• This is further complicated by the incidence in the ad film not only of verbal, butalso of visual (and sonic) modalities

• The point of the non-universally relevant functions offered by Propp has also beenstressed by Rastier (2005c): “l’inventaire des fonctions doit s’adapter aux discours(juridique, politique, etc.) et même aux genres”.

•Not taking into account the motivated structure of an ad filmic text has repercussionsalongside the generative trajectory’s strata.

Criticisms of Floch’s adaptation of the CNS in the analysis ofadvertising discourse from a brand generativist POV

• From a brand equity point of view that is concerned primarily with differential brandassociations, the CNS is not sufficient in accounting for how associations may beprojected in a differential fashion.

•In order to account for the way whereby a narrative schema in the context of branddiscourse hangs together as string of narrative programs we must complement theactantial syntax that is driven by the acts of determinate actantial figures and adeterminate set of actantial modalities furnished by Greimas with a transformativesyntax that is incumbent on rhetorical operations and figures.

• while taking into account issues of multimodal rhetoric


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Floch’s major contribution regardless of the abandonment of thegenerative trajectory: Emphasis on brand discourse as semi-symbolicsign system

• Assuming as point of departure the famous ‘commutation test’

• “Commutation is […] the relation of reciprocal presupposition between the expressionplane and the content plane” (Floch 2001)

• It is only in the process of looking for such correspondences between the two planes ofsignification that “we begin to take note of the actual visual or aural qualities thatconstitute the aesthetic of a given brand” (Floch 2001: 8-9), while a brand’s textualstructure emerges through distinguishing between core or invariant and peripheral orvariable signifying elements.

•“This kind of coupling between the expression and content of a language constitutes asemi-symbolic system” (Floch 2001: 75; also see Floch 2000: 46 and Broden 1996: 21).

• The commutation test is of paramount importance in maintaining brand coherence, butmay not account for the need for consistency among variable surface ad textualmanifestations which mandates the adoption of a diachronic outlook in a competitivesetting.

Floch’s semi-symbolic structures “This encoding was produced by coupling the category ‘euphoria’ versus ‘dysphoria’ which underlies

the overall content of the advertisements examined with the twelve visual categories that constitutedthe expression categories of values and colours, of composition and of techniques or ‘styles’. As asemantic category, euphoria versus dysphoria has to be viewed as the articulation, the minimalstructuring of the universe of thymia, that is of the field that accounts for such notions as well-being,pleasure, tranquility and calm on the one hand and sadness, anxiety, pain or dread on the other. THISKIND OF COUPLING BETWEEN THE EXPRESSION AND CONTENT OF A LANGUAGECONSTITUTES A SEMI-SYMBOLIC SYSTEM” (Floch 2001: 75)

Semi-symbolic vs. symbolic and semiotic systems (Hjelmslev) Symbolic systems: Languages whose two planes are in total conformity

For each element of the plane of content there is one element at the plane of expression Semiotic systems: Languages where no conformity exists between the two planes Semi-symbolic: Correspondence between the two planes not at the level of individual signs, but at the

level of categories (second and third levels of reduction/articulation) “Semi-symbolic systems are signifying systems characterized by a correlation between categories

concerning the plane of expression and the plane of content” (Floch 2000; e.g., chromatic category andthymic category or ‘bright colors’ being correlated with ‘euphoria’).

AND I WOULD ADD STRUCTURES THAT ARE DEFINED BY FLUID IMAGINARY RELATIONSBETWEEN THE TWO PLANES, RATHER THAN STRICTLY SYMBOLIC ONES. SEMI- REFERSTO THE OSCILLATION OF THE CONCERNED EXPRESSIVE UNITS’ SEMANTIC CONTENTBETWEEN THE IMAGINARY AND THE SYMBOLIC.


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Semprini’s approach to brand image research• Built on and advanced Floch’s structuralist semiotic approach to branding and advertising.

• More integrated approach to how brand identity is constructed

• Combining semiotics with systems theory

• In line with Greimas’s generative trajectory of signification, offered a 3ple structure of

brand identity along axiological, narrative, surface levels.

• Also taking into account marketing discourse, rather than applying structuralist semiotics in

a theoretical vacuum.

Semprini’s approach to brand image research• For Semprini (1992), a brand is essentially an inter-subjective contract between sender

and receiver in perpetual motion.

• Brands constitute semiotic constellations in virtually infinite configurations.

• Brand meaning, however, is not exhausted in the relationship between sender andreceiver, but depends on the concurrence of a constantly shifting competitive landscapewhich is compounded by cultural transformations that impact on the value-systems of abrand’s audiences.

• These factors contribute to what Semprini calls by allusion to the 2nd law ofthermodynamics the “entropy of the brand”.

• Hence, “brand identity is the result of continuous interactions and incessant exchangesamongst three sub-systems that we call encyclopedia of production (sub-system A),environment (sub-system B), and encyclopedia of reception (sub-system C)” (Semprini1992: 40).


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Semprini’s approach to brand identity• Semprini’s structuralist semiotic heritage emerges quite compellingly in his account of

how a brand identity system may be constructed.

• Evidently writing under the influence of Floch, but also drawing implicitly on basicGreimasian postulates, Semprini contends that a brand identity system is made up ofa multiplicity of discourses in a hierarchical ordering.

• A brand discourse is made up not only of discrete elements, but also of differentialrelations among elements.

• In order to account for these relational structures among the elements making up abrand identity system, Semprini proposes a three-level structural system that bearsconsiderable resemblance to Greimas’s system of signification as a multi-levelgenerative trajectory.

Semprini’s brand identity system(example of Levi’s identity)


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Semprini’s approach to brand identity• This perspective on brand identity distinguishes amongst three different levels of brand

meaning, in terms of depth/surface level signification, namely the base or axiological level,the narrative level and the surface/discursive level.

• At the heart of a brand identity system lies the intermediate level of brand narrative. “Atthis level, the base values are organized in the form of narratives. A narrative grammarallows for the ordering of base values in relations of opposition” (Semprini 1992).

• The discursive level allows for the endowment of abstract base values with concretemanifest representations, such as fleshing out the values of mastery and virility bysituating the Marlboro brand myth in a rough and difficult environment.• “The discursive or surface level is where base values and narrative structures are enriched by

figures” (Semprini 1992).

• In other terms, the surface level is where a brand personality is invested with concretefeatures, such as a face, a bodily posture, a profession, a context of action and all thecontextual elements that allow for a brand’s identification and differentiation.

Semprini’s adaptation of Floch’s axiological brandmap

• The fundamental building blocks consistof practical and utopian values.

• Practical (or base) values= functionalaspects of a brand’s ownership and usage(comparable to Keller’s primary brandassociations)

• Utopian (or existential) values= abstractvalues (comparable to Keller’s secondarybrand associations)

• By projecting these fundamental valueson a Greimasian semiotic square, Flochcame up with their opposites in the form ofcritical and ludic values.


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Limitations in Semprini’s brand semiotic approach• Uncritical adaptation of Floch’s universal axiological framework.

• Largely non category-wide competitive salient set as analytical groundwork(e.g., extensive analyses of Benetton, Marlboro ads in a non-competitivecontext).

• Regarding the mode of exposition of the interlocking levels in a brand identitysystem, what is still missing is a demonstration of the proclaimedfundamental value of accounting for the modes of connectivity amongst theelements of the three levels.

• Not demonstrating how transitions among the levels of the trajectory areeffected• each level has a unique morphology and syntax.

Typologies of brands as signsAuthor/Year Theory Product-based Non-product basedKeller 1998 primary and

secondary brandassociations

primary brandassociations pertainto tangible aspectsof brands (e.g.,ingredients anddirect usagebenefits)

secondary brandassociations pertain to theintangible aspects ofbrands, such as user andusage imagery

Nöth 1988 3 prototypical frameswhereby brands assigns may beexamined

utilitarian:associated withfeatures related topractical use-value,such as durability,reliability,usefulness.

commercial: signifies abrand's exchange value orits price. Socio-cultural: relating a brand tothe social group or culturewith which it is typicallyassociated.

Floch 2001 practical (base) vs.utopian brand values

practical valuesrelate to basic tasksthat are fulfilled byproducts

utopian values reflectabstract values with whichbrands may be invested

Danesi 2006(Barthes)

denotative vs.connotative functionof brands

denotative function:Gucci shoes areprotective gear.

connotative function: Gucciconnotes elegance andartistry


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Peircean semiotic approach to brand identity: BrandTriangle (Lencastre & Corte-Real 2010, 2013)• Descriptive approach to branding that draws on Peircean triads

• Three basic pillars:

identity: the sign or a set of signs understood in the strict sense of signs which are legallyprotectable as brands which identify the brand itself and the brands that it potentiallycovers.

object: marketing actions understood in the literal sense of actions aimed at establishing agiven exchange relationship of a product in a market of the main product and otherpotential products covered by the brand.

response: brand associations understood in the broad sense of cognitive, affective,conative or behavioural reactions that individuals have to any component of its identity orobject.

Peircean semiotic approach to brand identity: BrandTriangle (Lencastre & Corte-Real 2010, 2013)• Descriptive approach to branding that draws on Peircean triads

• Three basic pillars:

identity: the sign or a set of signs understood in the strict sense of signs which are legallyprotectable as brands which identify the brand itself and the brands that it potentiallycovers.

object: marketing actions understood in the literal sense of actions aimed at establishing agiven exchange relationship of a product in a market of the main product and otherpotential products covered by the brand.

response: brand associations understood in the broad sense of cognitive, affective,conative or behavioural reactions that individuals have to any component of its identity orobject.


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Peircean semiotic approach to brand identity: BrandTriangle (Lencastre & Corte-Real 2010, 2013) Core, Actual, Augmented Identity The core identity is the sign used for most immediate identification of all its products (e.g.,

brand name). The actual identity corresponds to the way or ways the core identity is expressed

graphically or the means whereby the core identity may become legally protectable. All other signs that may be afforded protection as legally recognised brands and which

complement the actual identity.

Core, Actual, Augmented Object The core object is the brand’s most direct presentation of its activity and its main market, in

other words, its main exchange relationship. The actual object concerns other exchange relations that are important to sustain a

brand’s main exchange relationship. The term augmented object refers to all the marketing tools used to place each of the

brand’s offers in their specific markets.

Sociosemiotic analysis of airlines’ logos (Thurlow andAiello 2007) Sociosemiotic reading of how symbolic/cultural capital is created through

aesthetic/design patterns of airplanes’ tailfin logos.

Corpus: 561 logos from globally operating airlines.

Three levels of analysis Descriptive text analysis: Identification of expressive inventory through content

analysis. Interpretive text analysis: Reconstruction of the ‘latent’ grammar of visual design

by consideration of how meaning potentials are established, with a focus on therole visual perception and cultural signification play in creating visual meaning intailfin design.

Critical text analysis: Consideration of the link between the semiotic strategiesused for generating (or leveraging) symbolic capital and the power relationswhich appear to frame the practices of global corporate branding.


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Sociosemiotic analysis of airlines’ logos (Thurlow andAiello 2007): Descriptive text analysis

“This analysis of the primary visualcontent revealed a strikingly limitedvisual lexicon.”

“As social semioticians point out, visualmeaning is best thought of as themanipulation or exploitation ofresources rather than the application ofcodes (Jewitt and Oyama, 2001).”

Sociosemiotic analysis of airlines’ logos (Thurlow andAiello 2007): Interpretive text analysis Logos largely maintained a balance between ‘national pride’ and global cultural capital by

drawing on national emblems, yet redesigned in such a fashion as to enhance their globalappeal.

Key mechanism whereby this ‘glocalisation’ was achieved: Kinetic stylization darting, gradation, diagonalization, tapering and, for Air New Zealand, brush stroking.

“Rebranding also entails an increasing abstraction of logos whereby specifically nationalsemantic content is visually diluted (e.g. the geographic compass location for Northwest,the localized crane motif for JAL, the national colours for Gulf ).”

“In the case of Georgian Airlines, the rebranding involves a total change of tailfin designwhich drops the Georgian flag altogether in favor of a generically consistent (i.e. the spiral)but nationally ‘insignificant’ pattern. This diminishing of national specificity seems to be aneven more strategic move to re-evalute the visual currency in pursuit of greater profitmargins and extended, global reach.”


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Sociosemiotic analysis of airlines’ logos (Thurlow andAiello 2007): Interpretive text analysis Logos largely maintained a balance between ‘national pride’ and global cultural capital by

drawing on national emblems, yet redesigned in such a fashion as to enhance their globalappeal.

Key mechanism whereby this ‘glocalisation’ was achieved: Kinetic stylization darting, gradation, diagonalization, tapering and, for Air New Zealand, brush stroking.

“Rebranding also entails an increasing abstraction of logos whereby specifically nationalsemantic content is visually diluted (e.g. the geographic compass location for Northwest,the localized crane motif for JAL, the national colours for Gulf ).”

“In the case of Georgian Airlines, the rebranding involves a total change of tailfin designwhich drops the Georgian flag altogether in favor of a generically consistent (i.e. the spiral)but nationally ‘insignificant’ pattern. This diminishing of national specificity seems to be aneven more strategic move to re-evalute the visual currency in pursuit of greater profitmargins and extended, global reach.”

Sociosemiotic analysis of airlines’ logos (Thurlow andAiello 2007): Critical text analysis “Micro-level analyses are able to show how globalism is being worked out in practice.”

“This is what Fairclough (2003) refers to as ‘textualization’ – the process whereby socialand economic realities are represented and established discursively. It is also the sociallyconstructed, discursive nature of ‘globalization’ which makes it so suitable for analysis bysocial semioticians and critical discourse analysts.”

“The synergistic relation between the perceptual and the cultural in visual imagery appearsnicely to parallel the global/local synergism of the ‘transnational imaginary’ (Wilson andDissanayake, 1996).”


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Semiotic criticism of the cognitive psychological account ofthe formation of brand associations (Bauters 2007)

Offering a ‘holistic’ context of interpretation of Finnish and Italian beer brands’ labelsthat takes into account the interpreter, the social context, the history of the studiedbrands as signs and the role of emotions in a decision making process.

Interdisciplinary approach that blends social psychological perspectives (Mead,Moscovici, Damasio) with semiotic ones (Peirce, Tarasti, Kress & Van Leeuwen)

The signification of the object changes constantly, but so does the ‘meaning’ of thecognizing subject (as sign) The outcome of the signification process depends on the shifting hierarchical

structure in the mass of multiple associations. This hierarchy changes, thus bringing about different interpretations at different

times when the interpretant still perceives the same sign. Among these are the Interpreting Mind’s former experiences (memory) and the

social network that affects the Interpreting Mind. The influence of the social network can be named societal semiosis. The Interpreting Mind belongs to the semiosic process.

The role of social networks/community in bringing about consensus aboutinterpretations or how target groups form common interpretations of signs(Bauters 2007)

Social psychological theories could gain from the Peircean approach the idea that an individualis essentially social in nature and belongs to triadic processes. The interpretation or the creation of meaning in any artefact requires “collateral experience”. The individual is not able to proceed in its semiosis all by him/herself, but needs interaction

with society. It is not possible to separate the semiosis that goes on within the person and that which

goes on between the person and the Umwelt. Peirce’s philosophy of mediation highlights the idea of semiosis as the main element from

which one can begin searching for the dynamics between signs, groups and individuals andthe investigation of meanings, attitudes and belief formation.

“Otherness and meaning are given together in our experience of our self as being embedded ina network of relations – more specifically, enmeshed in the ‘semiotic web’” (Colapietro 1989).

To belong to a group means that at least some of the values, habits and partially the world-view/lifestyle are agreed among the individuals Habits, norms and attitudes which grow through the process of intertwining with the Umwelt.


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Major gaps in the marketing semiotic literature

• No coherent models available, focusing on brand equity, rather than branding in

general

• Structuralist semiotic perspectives have been largely employed for analyzing

descriptively (interpretively) ads, rather than focusing on ad texts as sources of brand

equity

• Binarism still dominant in a theoretical landscape that favors connectionist

approaches

• Lack of quantification of qualitative phenomena


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Major gaps in the marketing literature• Focusing on the encoding stage of brand texts, rather than decoding.

• Adopting a brand textuality perspective in addressing and managing brand

associations.

• Adding rigor to the employment of semiotic perspectives in marketing research.

• Projecting brand equity in a category-specific context by mapping out a

category’s semic microuniverse, its expressive inventory and modes of

connectivity among expressive elements.

• Focusing on operations of semantic transformation and modes of connectivity,

rather than expressive elements, a significantly under-researched area

• with an emphasis on rhetorical relata

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George rossolatos seminar on branding, brand equity, brand semiotic models and research methods part...

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