Introduction to Semiotics 2007 semiotics.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)208 693 1413 172 Court Lane

1. Introduction to Semiotics 2007 www.semiotics.co.uk Tel: +44 (0)208 693 1413 172 Court Lane London SE21 7ED UK

2. A Flexible and Innovative Research and Marketing Methodology • Semiotics is a desk-based methodology that uses academic theories to analyse and develop brands • Semiotics seeks to uncover how brands (through product, packaging and communications) create meaning • These meanings are uncovered by an analysis of the cultural and symbolic codes and contexts that operate in the world of brands, products and popular culture

3. A Flexible and Innovative Research and Marketing Methodology • Semiotic analysis uses this cultural mapping to define a brand's current symbolic, emotional and rational equities while offering guidance towards the ownership of unique cultural spaces • Semiotics can provide new insights for product innovation and practical guidance for maximising brand saliency, differentiation and appeal • Semiotics can get under the skin of culture, product and brand symbolism by understanding the hidden forces that inform consumer understanding, engagement and enjoyment

4. About Greg Rowland Semiotics • Greg Rowland works with a large global network of specialist analysts to provide analysis and inspiration for brands, products, design and marketing through single or multi-country projects • Our clients include Unilever, GSK, Diageo, Calvin Klein, Kellogg, UBS, Wrigley, Tesco, T-Mobile, Exxon Mobil, Reckitt Benckiser, McCain, Mercedes Benz, Sealine, Barclaycard, William Hill, Ford, KFC, UK Govt agencies and many others • Recent projects include: • developing new products for Diageo in Ireland • creating a global platform for a financial services brand • developing a health brand in India • inspiring a high-street bookmaker’s new corporate identity • analysing the symbolism of the classic bottle for Coca-Cola in the US • advising the public sector on issues including the environment, childhood obesity, teenage litter-dropping and the promotion of science.

5. The Process • Greg works with a full-time London team and a range of global analysts and sector specialists • Analysts are drawn from the world of academia and creative industries, depending on the needs of the brief • Our pool of over fifty freelancers provide findings which are then translated into accessible debriefs and actionable recommendations by the London team • The work is entirely desk-based: interrogating brands, products and popular culture rather than consumers

6. Process and Outcomes: The Semiotic Tree Input for: Qualitative Research, Marketing, Comms, Design & NPD Insight & Inspiration: Ideas for Brand & Product Evolution New Brand Metaphors and Codes Brand Needs Emergent Codes Current Brand Codes and Meanings Current Competitive Codes Brand History & Equities Popular Cultural Codes Deep Sector Discourse Deep Culture

7. What we’re not….

8. So you sit on your sofa all day and just make it up without talking to any consumers? • consumers generate certain insights into how they feel and think • but semiotics asks questions of brands and cultures rather than people • we would argue that consumers are not solely the author of their opinions • it is our culture which tells us what to think and how to think it • so semiotics seeks to investigate how culture works - and help brands manipulate brands and culture more effectively

9. Culture is always constructed… Our beliefs, desires, attitudes and ideas are constructed. Forces act upon us to shape our identities within culture.. Materialism Ideology History Aesthetics Nature Work Socialisation Heritage Emotions Biology Economics Politics Narratives Psychology Abstraction Money Attitudes Change Creativity Environment Beliefs Science Personal Experience CULTURE

10. Culture is always constructed… (cont) • culture informs the way we live and understand the world • we are often not aware of how culture shapes us and the world around us • culture encodes itself in our lives • semiotics can help read and manipulate those codes

11. Cultures are built by codes • cultural codes are the rules and conventions that govern communication, interpretation, behaviours and attitudes • codes are the contexts that allow us to make sense of signs • codes change over time

12. In order to understand a brand we need to examine codes and signs around: • Communications, Pack and Product of the brand in focus • The Historical Brand and Sector • The Competitive Set • The Product Discourse • The Popular Cultural Discourse The critical aspect is to find the connections that can evolve new cultural or symbolic spaces for brands to explore…

13. Codes are constructed by Signs Signs are the basic building blocks of meaning A sign is split into two halves: Signified The Conceptual Sign Signifier The Material Sign

14. Signifiers: “e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t” (arbitrary) (iconic)

15. Encoding Elephants • Dumbo • Sabu’s pet • Nellie • Babar • Elephant and Castle • Elephant Man etc etc

16. Signs are therefore energetic and dynamic… Signifiers may point to different symbolic signifieds for different interpretive communities….

17. Texts within culture also have an ‘unconscious’ Author’s Intention Conscious Meanings Consumer Interpretations Conscious Meanings Unconscious Meanings Consumer Unconscious CULTURAL MEANINGS

18. Examples of what we do… • Insight Generation for Brands • Sector and Thematic Exploration (eg. health, femininity, refreshment, fruitiness, sexiness, humour, glamour, fame etc) • Global Brand Analysis and Development: Commonalities and Difference • Concept Generation and Creative Inspiration (communications, positioning, NPD, activation, design/product etc) • Marketing and Strategic Consultancy

19. We were asked to make Pot Noodle a more iconic brand. So we started thinking… but the last place we wanted to look was at youth brands or 'official' youth culture…

20. What is Pot Noodle? Noodle • everyday foreign food • silly stringy food, like spaghetti, inherently opposed to traditional • British food • difficult to eat politely • comforting carbohydrates, mouth-filling • kiddie fun food

21. What is Pot Noodle?(cont) Oriental Food • semiotically stretchy (like Indian food) • cheap local takeaways stretching to gourmet restaurants • can still retain exotica at gourmet level • not locked into rigid codes of food propriety/snacky fun, noodles as • deconstructive

22. What is Pot Noodle?(cont) Vernacular Noodle • use your noodle • noodles in 20s US gangster culture • jazz noodling • Mr Noodle on Sesame Street • funny word ->oodles, doodle, doodlebug, noodle (idiot)

23. 'Noodle' is a signifier for silliness, inconsequentiality, food on the go, American-Chinese experience, for noshing as opposed to dining…. • Pot Noodle should therefore never try for authenticity or seriousness – it should vanguard stupidity in all its forms • Pot and Noodle therefore brings signifieds of excess, fun, silliness and a tinge of drug lore….

24. We did a paradigm… And found that Pot Noodle was not exactly one thing or another… Snack Real Food SillySerious Kid Adult RubbishQuality ImpulsePlanned IndividualCollective CheapNot so cheap Instant GratificationDeferred gratification MotionSedentary InauthenticAuthentic Out of homeIn home InsubstantialSubstantial Intense Taste HitGrown Up Flavours Snacks simply subvert real food values – what if Pot Noodle perverted food values instead?

25. Good Food Pot Noodle Wholesome Artificial Real Fake Natural Technological Effort Easy Aesthetics Crass High Culture Low Culture Serious Playful Real Pleasure Base Gratification So Pot Noodle suggests metaphors around a process of pleasurable degradation….

26. So we searched for structural similarities to Good Food/Pot Noodle elsewhere in culture…. Real Love Porn Mutual Care Individual Gratification Authentic Fake Eternal Transient Deep Shallow Real Emotions False Emotions Priceless Cheap Effort Easy Beauty Crassness Beyond Money Commercial Wholesome Degraded Natural Technological Long term Quick Venus de Milo Jenna Jameson

27. This all helped lead to the infamous Slag of All Snacks Campaign. Not shock for shock's sake – but a legitimate reflection of the product and brand's semiotic reality….

28. Slag of All Snacks

29. Rexona for Women: Russia • Rexona needed to evolve the category and brand in Russia • Women were saying that they used it everyday, but the sales data was not stacking up • Semiotics was commissioned to help break the culture of spin around deo, and create a powerful new communication to drive regular use

30. We identified several cultural themes in Russia • The Strong Leader • Mother Russia as a potentially hysterical woman who loves strong rational leadership • A sense that Russia may collapse into emotional anarchy if not bound in by strong rationality and authority • Russia as the ‘unconscious of the West’

31. We identified several cultural themes in Russia • The Joy of Pessimism • If things can go wrong, they will go wrong • But ultimately there is a security and comfort in expecting the worst, and dealing with it with a typical dark humour • "We hoped for the best, but things turned out as usual.” (Viktor Chernomyrdin, former Russian Prime Minister, on the death of Yelstin)

32. We identified several cultural themes in Russia • Shared Concepts • Despite the strong leader, society is built upon personal networks, exchange of favours and a fair degree of corruption • Despite, or perhaps because of elite authoritarianism, there is a culture of communal ‘spin’ • This culture informs people that there are always short-cuts to any goal

33. We identified several cultural themes in Russia • Moscow and Glamour • Moscow represents the materialist elite as the key site of glamour in Russia • Glamour is the new ideology — justifying elite behaviours • Women outside Moscow may view the capital as desirable and despicable simultaneously

34. How did these themes contribute to building a platform for Rexona? • Shared Concepts: Rexona needed to emphasise that sweat and odour are ‘no-spin’ zones. However beautiful or lucky you are, you will be let down by your ‘liquid unconscious’. • Moscow and Glamour: could Rexona play on the admiration and jealousy that constructs the specifically elite ideology of Russian glamour?

35. How did these themes contribute to building a platform for Rexona? • The Strong Leader: Rexona should not be afraid of up-front and challenging expressions of its own authority • The Joy of Pessimism: Rexona had license to find powerful way of suggesting that the best possible moments can be destroyed by sweat and odour

36. Semiotics as Inspiration • We evolved several platforms based on these themes • The variety of platforms gave the workshop stakeholders an opportunity to play with ideas, and to understand their location and relevance in culture • Overall, we felt that Russia needed glamorous glossy advertising, but with a challenging marketing message that reflected the relative lack of evolution within the category…

37. Examples of Semiotic Platforms for Advertising Inspiration • Sweat Monsters • Bacteria monsters are like gremlins which you can never shake off • The gremlins which prevent you from having fun or taking opportunities • Rexona as the ray-gun which banishes the gremlins from your life forever!

38. Examples of Semiotic Platforms for Advertising Inspiration • Educate Your Armpits • Sweat is great for animals and cave people, it marks out who they are — but shouldn’t we have advanced a little beyond this? • Sweat is gross nature — and armpits are the window to our basest animal form if not cared for properly • Rexona is like a civilising process for the armpit and moves us away from the animalistic and unpleasant aspects of the natural…

39. Examples of Semiotic Platforms for Advertising Inspiration • Odour as Tell-Tale • There’s no disguising, no getting around it, no spin around stinkiness • Odour as a revelation of your innermost Self: it’s like leaving your finger prints at a scene • The consumer can choose to leave a more elegant Calling Card than a residual stink…

40. Rexona Tattoo Ad

41. Exploring Calvin Klein Calvinism and Kleinian Psychoanalysis - a serendipitous approach

42. Exploring Calvin Klein Calvinist Klein • the Protestant reformer, John Calvin, was a leading light of the Puritan movement that had such a profound influence on the US • John Calvin's desire for simplicity and clarity – and a ascetical rejection of material and clutter predates and informs Modernist Minimalism • Calvinism also emphasis a theological notion of pre-determination, that people have no genuine free-will to act or even to sin. Instead we're all part of a giant tapestry of God's plan… • the modern inheritance of this idea is the Existential Crisis, a battle between representation and reality, free-will and fate – and is echoed, once again, in Calvin Klein's aesthetic universe wherein players are being played, and are victim of their destructive emotional urges….

43. Exploring Calvin Klein So what does modernism look like? Modernism can be: Formal Minimal Industrial Experimental Shocking Melancholic Fascistic Emancipatory Difficult Elitist Disruptive

44. Calvin Klein Best Practice Brand Map Austerity Melancholia Control Minimalism Aesthetic Modernism Purity Intense Emotional Process Sexy Non-Orgasmic Open Ended/Non-closure Crisis/Play of Identity and Perception

45. 3. Investigating Sex and Calvin Klein

46. 3. Investigating Sex and Calvin Klein Sex Strategy for Calvin Klein • anti-shock tactics • it's actually more exciting to enjoy the journey rather than focus on orgasm/the pure distillation of the end result… • the shock of the non-conclusion: emotion in transition rather than as (eg Gucci) an end-point. • remain true to the Master Brand while offering the consumer something new and different. • for women, foreplay (ie the journey) is generally more exiting than (Gucci's intercourse (the end result) • thus Calvin Klein's sexuality is more exciting and less over-used than the Gucci route (whose porn-inspired imagery becomes increasingly less distinctive as many others crowd in on the codes) • let Gucci and the others enjoy their (possibly faked) orgasms and let Calvin Klein explore the richer wider world of human sexuality…

47. 4. Strategic Brand Thinking The Opportunity for Calvin Klein • Calvin Klein is perfectly framed to capture the implicitly darker tonality of the emerging 21st Century, by recourse to its codes of 20th century Modernism… • Calvin Klein can explore the aesthetic possibilities around a sexy world which is tinged by darkness, and people's fears of the future ---whether these fears turn out to be real or imaginary they represent a powerful discourse that is simultaneously sexy, true to Calvin Klein and highly differentiating within the sector…. • Calvin Klein fragrances could attempt to tangentially address this shocking new world, and thus gain its cultural pre-eminence once again…

48. Calvin Klein Aesthetic Accountability Mechanism Calvinist Aesthetic Emotional/Interpersonal Process Intensity Irreducible to single meaning New Name and Concept High Modernism Erotic Potential Fragrance Values Cultural Salience/Intrigue

49. Concept One Cultural Support • populist amnesia movies like The Bourne Identity, Memento, Total Recall • socio-cultural trend of abnegation of personal responsibility to external factors • the ultimate make-over for The Self – a potentially new Self everyday ModernistFactor • echoes of 'the flanneur', a disengaged but fascinated city wanderer • modernist theme of the unreliable nature of perception and memory

50. Concept One (cont) Sexy Factor • a license to sin or follow desire • wiping the slate clean, eliminating all regrets • living in the now without anxiety about consequences Calvin Klein Portfolio Role • internalising a big concept, rather than externalising • feminine, less strident word-sound • embraces doubt and uncertainty