Tag Archives: signs

Semiotics and Brand Development

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A brand is more than one iconic symbol, it’s a system of interconnected images, actions and signs that create a response in your consumers. While it is often put down to something as simple as logo design (which is anything but simple, in fact), identity and branding work extends beyond the creation of a company logo or trademark. The identity of any particular corporation, product or service encompasses a variety of materials including business cards, marketing materials, staff uniforms, advertisements, commercials, web presence, etc. All of this is created to establish an identity that the consumer comes to value beyond the direct benefits of the company.

A part of establishing the company brand, the identity work is important in conveying the principles, ideas and standards of the organization for which it is developed. Designers work together with strategists, copywriters, marketing directors and a host of other professionals to ensure that a brand identity is communicated effectively and efficiently from the client to the consumer. And in an age of social media and assumed shared interests, the communication is increasingly a multi-faceted conversation.

Most design firms and agencies create branding and identity work for their clients on some level, others specialize in identity and branding only. In any case, brand development involves deep thinking and a commitment to understanding the symbolic interconnectedness of the parties engaged with the brand. This is the art and science of semiotics. But why bother?  There are a number of simple reasons.

Understanding

Semiotics can help you dig into the underlying meanings in communication and establish a richer connection with consumers. On a practical level, a semiotic approach allows you to determine why an ad, a web page or a new product’s design is or isn’t working. It allows you to isolate components, but it also allows you to determine how they work or don’t work in relation to other elements.

Renovation

Over time symbols change and without constant care brands fall apart. A brand can keep making small changes, but ultimately, this process doesn’t work. Eventually you have to strip right back to bare bones and rebuild the brand completely. Semiotics can be used to deconstruct brands and categories, exposing truths that can be used to reconstruct them, and make them stronger.

Articulation

Semiotics can help articulate the problem you actually have, as opposed to the symptom you are trying to address. The approach allows you to move beyond intuition and get to the deeper issues behind what is happening with your brand.

Research

A semiotic approach can help you improve your qualitative work, by helping you redevelop your line of questioning, or listening for different things. Rather than focusing on traditional needs-based questioning and observation, a semiotics approach uncovers deeper issues and subconscious triggers that strengthen the meaning behind the brand.  There is a strong tradition in ethnographic research specifically of employing a semiotic approach.  Both methods are observational and interpretive. Ethnographic research aims to understand what consumers do and why they do it, rather than what they say. In other words, it assumes that human behavior is more complex than what people tell you. Similarly, semiotics assumes that how human beings interact with and understand the world is more than what they tell you.

Briefs

Ultimately, semiotics creates richer, deeper briefs and platforms that creative teams can actually work from. Rather than simply providing data, it provides avenues of expression that the creative team can build upon and use to explore a range of opportunities for communication. It can provide platforms from which to strengthen your communication, be that advertising or design.

Semiotics and the Brand

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Marketers have long recognized the symbolic nature of shopping and consumption.  Products and brands are symbols for sale – products and brands are often purchased as much for their symbolic value as they are their pragmatic value.  And this is the heart of Semiotics.

Semiotics is the study of symbols , signs and sign processes.  I has been a fundamental part of anthropology since the beginnings of the discipline.  Experts in Semiotics are trained to identify and make sense of these symbol systems, uncovering how they construct and reflect the cultural contexts in which they are found. As it relates to business, Semioticians are trained to identify, interpret, and leverage these symbolic meanings for purposes of market definition, brand development, brand positioning, communication strategy, design and packaging.

Brands are symbol systems that consumers associate with verbal, visual, and performative elements of communication. They are temples to meanings that are rarely articulated in focus groups or surveys. That means that every element of a product or service, from cans of beer to amusement parks, is wrapped up in a series of symbols that consumers use to interpret what a brand means and how it relates specifically to them.  These symbolic dimensions add value to products by creating added dimensions beyond the obvious, functional needs. Brands allow consumers to create meaning for themselves, helping them construct who they symbolically want to be. This sense of self is an articulated schema  that functionally controls how self-referent information is structured and categorized.  It establishes how closely a brand reflects the self, which means they are tied to how people construct identity. The more closely the symbolic structures are tied to the sense of self, the more important they become to the individual. Brands, then, speak to those elements of existence that shape the unspoken needs we have as human beings for such concepts as love, status, ritual, power and belonging. In other words, they touch us on a deeper level that stirs our emotions and our interest.

As an example, I have done a great deal of work over the years around household provisioning.  From beer to toilet paper to cereal to soap. In all of these cases, the reasons for brand loyalty are only minimally tied to function. Yes, performance and price drive sales, but consumers are fickle and willing to turn away from brands they have no symbolic ties to when something else comes along. Not so for those brands with strong symbolic associations. Consumers who are loyal to a brand of soap because they associate it with being a good parent are more likely to stick with the brand no matter what. Brewers that talk less about calories and the affects of alcohol, focusing instead on nostalgia, connoisseurship, and status are more likely to retain their consumers.  The more the brand touches the underlying symbolic drivers behind the purchase, the more likely they are to see long-term commitment on the part of the shopper and consumer.

A brand is a sign, or more accurately a system of signs, that triggers a process of interpretation is a consumer’s mind, which means it is more than a series of functional, commoditized features and benefits. It touches on memories, associations with broad cultural ideals and individual desires. It is an act of two-way communication, not just a one-way projection by the company to the consumer. When brands speak to the rationale and meanings behind these semiotic structures, brands move beyond the codes governing a product category and enter the personal space of the consumer. That positions the brand to become something more than a commodity, it becomes part of the consumer’s life and promotes a wider array of associations between the brand and the consumer. That produces loyalty and great market share.

Symbolism and Sales

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A presentation on using Semiotics in marketing and advertising:

Good Symbol Systems Means Profit

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The sign is the central term in semiotics. The sign is made up of the signified and the signifier. The two always go together, they are like the two sides of a coin. The signifier is the physical form of an object; what we see, touch and smell in the objective and shared reality. The signified is the content, the meaning of the object; what we experience, think and feel when we interact with the artifact, be it a billboard, a banner ad or a toaster. All old hat to anyone interested in the use of symbols, whether as a designer, marketer or academic. But what is often overlooked is the medium in which the sign manifests itself – and the medium has a dramatic impact on the interpretation of the sign. The medium is anything but neutral.

Television, radio, journals, and particular texts derive meaning from the media that is used. As Marshall McLuhan famously exclaimed “The medium is the message”. What this means is that when developing a marketing strategy, brand identity or anything else, it isn’t enough to understand individual signs, you have to understand how the signs work together as a systematic whole. Waxing jargony for just a moment, it means understanding what a syntagm is (for anyone of a less geeky inclination, the next paragraph should be avoided).

A syntagm is the combination of interacting signifiers, which form a meaningful whole within a symbol system. In language a sentence is a syntagm of word, so too are paragraphs and chapters. A larger syntagm is composed of smaller syntagms with interdependence between both. Syntagmatic relations are the various ways in which elements within the same text may be related to each other. In other words, syntagems are made up of symbolic elements, each independent in meaning but transformed when combined into a whole.

So what? It’s all very interesting, but how does this play out in a business context? It plays out when we think about context and how messages and products are consumed. Products that belong to the same paradigm perform the same function in a given context. So, for example, if we are thirsty we can choose to drink juice, water, cola, beer, wine etc. Which product we choose is shaped by socially defined, shared classification systems – we wouldn’t think twice about drinking a beer at a bar, but we probably wouldn’t have one for breakfast, though that was exactly the norm until the last few centuries. This is the symbolic side, rather than the functional.

Now, consider how people consume your brand and your messaging. How we promote goods in one location may not always make sense. For example, how we understand the Hallmark cards section in a Wal-Mart is different than how we understand it in a Gold Crown store because of context. Messages that make sense in one may be lost in another. In simpler terms, it would make sense to see a print ad for lingerie in a fashion magazine, but not in the church flier. Granted, this is an extreme example, but it speaks to the underlying need to think about the symbol systems we use to promote products and services, which means understanding the relationships between elements in the system. If you plan to market a toaster, you need to think about the various symbolic triggers to which people will respond negatively and positively. What does a retro design mean vs. another design? What does making something as simple as toast say about being a good parent? Will the same ad be interpreted the same way in a print campaign as it is when viewed on an iPad?  When we consume marketing messages, whether through advertising, promotions, etc., we are interpreting them through a syntagmatic lens, subconsciously filtering out those symbol systems that don’t “make sense”. Selecting the right symbolic elements means little if they don’t work as a unified whole, and that means lost revenue. Get the combinations right and you will convert shoppers into buyers and consumers into advocates.

In an age of cutting research budgets, I would argue that going down the cheap = good is a tremendous mistake. The more you know about the customer that goes beyond the standard metrics and segmentation study, the better positioned you are to win their hearts. And their dollars.