Decoding the signs
Semiotics helps to ensure intended brand meaning is achieved. Brands can
gain cultural capital when they test for contradictions in the imagery and
analyse whether the intended message is aligned in the cultural context
By Alex Gordon, Sign Salad
S
emiotics is an investigation into how
meaning is created and how meaning
is communicated. It is a fundamental
strategic and creative tool because
it ensures your brand values and
the intended meaning of your message are
received and understood by consumers.
Semiotics is a key tool to ensure that
intended meanings (of, for instance, a logo),
are unambiguously understood. It becomes
complicated when we think about the values
that many global brands want to stand for
and communicate to consumers. What is
the definition of premium-ness, healthiness,
naturalness, joyfulness, masculinity, femininity,
or beauty? What imagery and language should
be chosen to represent those values, not
just in a single market, but in 30 or more
across the world? You could ask a very large
number of people those questions and not
get any agreement about what the signifieds/
meanings of the signifier ‘beauty’ are.
These are not just words plucked out of
the air, but actual values that major global
brands want to stand for. They want to own
these values in a way that significantly (and I
use the word advisedly) differentiates them
from their competitors.
In often crowded categories, the choice
of the most relevant and appropriate image
in advertising campaigns can be crucial to
achieving that goal, especially because those
images are usually pregnant with multiple
meanings which unconsciously amplify our
understanding of the brand’s hidden cultural
value.
So much can be conveyed by the right sign
and advertising narrative, and be so beneficial
to the brand, but equally the wrong sign
or imagery can inflict damage on a brand,
undermining consumer connection and
reducing marketing effectiveness.
We can characterise brands that have
successfully grabbed, or retained, market
share as having considerable cultural
capital; that is, they stand for culturally
relevant values and frequently employ a
key brand mark or advertising campaign
to do so. Typically, for the world’s most
successful brands, a logo or mark, or even a
recognisable icon repeated in advertising (e.g.
McDonald’s ‘I’m lovin’ it’ aural sign-off) will
be where the cultural capital resides. A good
example is Interbrand’s annual assessment of
the Best Global Brands. In its 2012 survey,
Mercedes was ranked 11th, with its logo
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Aviva: its use of a
church spire in its logo
forced the consumer
into a position of
deference – the
implication was she
was protected by God,
not just by Aviva
assessed as an intangible asset worth $20
billion – far more than the tangible asset of
its car manufacturing business.
Two recent campaigns bring the power
of cultural capital sharply into focus. The
Marmite ‘Don’t Forget It’ campaign has been
a triumphant success, eliciting a sensational
response in social media. By contrast, the
campaign for Phileas Fogg snacks was less
enthusiastically received, potentially due to
compromised cultural capital.
The Marmite campaign fuses several
different cultural codes, which on the
surface might not appear to have that much
in common. The first is its historical ‘love/
hate’ campaign, which employs a simple
binary division to connote the traditions of
family disputes and tribal loyalties. In this
way, Marmite is not merely a spread: it is
implicated in those dinner-table disputes that
bind families together but also reveal subtle
and inexplicable shifts in character.
But the ‘love/hate’ dichotomy goes further
for Marmite, which employs it in one print
ad as an icon of a religious division, with the
brand coded either as a fiendish devil or a
virtuous angel. This is not mere advertising
frivolity, but places Marmite at the centre
of culture debates around the meaning and
value of the sacred and the profane, the
passive and the violent. Families can be split
by belief and transgression, and Marmite
absorbs this cultural coding into its brand
world.
In the recent campaign, this love/
hate heritage is fused with a second level
of cultural meaning, coding a deeper
connection to UK cultural life. UK society
is obsessed by revelations of abuse and
anxious about subversive behaviour lurking
behind the otherwise respectable doors of
the suburban middle classes. The abuse of
animals and children sits at the apex of moral
repugnance. The fly-on-the-wall documentary
has, therefore, become an accepted genre
enabling investigation and public exposure
of social and moral transgressions. The
newscaster Michael Buerk (who is used for
the ad’s voiceover) has become a voice of
moral authority in the media since breaking
the news of the Ethiopian famine that
precipitated the Live Aid activism.
Marmite’s ‘Don’t Forget It’ campaign
adopted this catalogue of cultural tropes,
replacing the children and animals with
neglected bottles of Marmite left to rot at
the back of kitchen cupboards. The success
of the campaign lay in the discomfort of
being given permission to laugh at a style
of filmmaking which usually permits only
sadness and despair. This campaign magnified
the meaning of the Marmite brand for
consumers, through their instantaneous and
irresistible assimilation of all of these cultural
associations.
But the power of such cultural capital
was arguably sacrificed by Phileas Fogg
in its campaign, running at the same time
as Marmite’s. In the 1980s, Phileas Fogg
snacks constructed its value and identity by
referencing the literary origins of the name
– the protagonist of Jules Verne’s Around
the World in Eighty Days – in the advertising
and packaging, and positing the snacks as
the product of his adventures abroad. The
hand-drawn graphic illustrations and cartoon
animations supposedly mirrored the stops
on his journey. This connection to a literary
classic immediately signified the brand as
having a premium cosmopolitan sophistication
denied to more domestic UK crisps.
The recent campaign, however, while
maintaining the reference to the country
of origin, abandoned the iconic figure
and literary reference, focusing instead
on stereotypical symbols of the chosen
countries: masked wrestling for Mexico;
gingham-wearing, freckled-faced, hoedowning
young girl for southern US.
While the rationale for using the
eccentricities of specific nations was to signify
the exciting flavour, and to distance Phileas
Fogg from other brands, the campaign now
arguably struggles to anchor the brand name
in a meaningful and relevant cultural context.
The brand is relying on consumers’ residual
memories of previous campaigns and of
their presumed knowledge of the meaning
and origins of the name, to grant the brand
cultural capital. But for those without such
awareness, the name appears meaningless
and the appeal of national stereotypes
potentially limiting because they are not
exclusively owned by the brand.
This abandonment of the equity of the
Phileas Fogg character seems a missed
opportunity, given the cultural resonance
of global adventuring (from James Bond to
David Attenborough) and the numerous
cultural signifiers of premium Victorian-ness
in British culture in the guise of top-hatted
gents: from Steampunk, Johnnie Walker and
Willie Wonka. Might the detachment of such
a rich cultural heritage and contemporary
meaning from the Phileas Fogg brand
(without the character, why the name?)
account for the paucity of positive comments
on social media?
Such cultural richness creates deep
connection to the Marmite brand without
us even realising it, and the lack of it creates
shallow engagement to Phileas Fogg. This
accounts for the former’s continued success,
and the struggle for market share of the
latter. It’s not the products that matter (or
even their flavour), it’s the cultural story
wrapped around them, and those multiple
narratives are bound together through
powerful cultural associations. But given
that brand marks and communications act
in such an important and nuanced way on
our cultural cortex, it is vital to manage their
meaning carefully so they communicate the
values most relevant to the brand’s identity
and positioning.
Admiral insurance company released
a print advertising campaign several years
ago, which revealed the complexity of this
process. The category leader in the insurance
market for many years was Norwich Union
(now Aviva), which used a church spire in its
logo. In this way, the consumer was forced
into a position of deference to the heavenly
might of Aviva’s divine insurance. The
implication was she was protected by God,
not just by Aviva.
Into this scenario parachuted Churchill
insurance. No longer above the consumer
as a distant deity, the brand’s key brand
ambassador, seen throughout its above-theline campaigns, was a bulldog who walked by
your side and chatted with you like your best
friend. As well as coding the friendlier face
of insurance, the brand mark also leveraged
the cultural status of Churchill himself –
courage, probity, integrity, heritage, longevity,
nationhood – all brilliant associations for an
insurance company to engender. You didn’t
worship Churchill insurance, you trusted it.
Between these two visions of the
insurance world – distant and divine, or
close and friendly – Admiral was caught. As a
result, it created a campaign where it took its
brand ambassador – the admiral – and placed
a talking parrot on his shoulder. We can’t be
sure of the aspiration of the execution, but
we can hazard a guess that, taking Churchill’s
lead, it added a talking animal to create a
sense of comic lightness. In this way, the
austerity of the admiral character would be
softened and made more approachable, and
the Admiral brand would be framed as more
“Semiotics can help
craft and refine
creative output,
ensuring the
most appropriate
imagery and
narratives are
adopted for
optimum brand
benefit”
relevant and contemporary.
But a parrot on a shoulder, while sharing
a maritime milieu with an admiral, is more
commonly associated with pirates, causing
confusion for the viewing consumer trying to
understand the benefit, value and purpose.
Was Admiral a maverick brand challenging
the status quo of the insurance establishment,
or, worse, stealing your money? Or was
Admiral a conservative brand embracing the
hierarchical traditions of the category as
signalled by Aviva, unchanged over time but
entirely familiar?
The presence of both icons – the parrot
and the admiral – made it more difficult
for consumers to understand the ad and
the brand meaning. They were instinctively
forced to create associations with culturally
contradictory values.
By viewing more recent print ads, we can
see that, at some point, the brand owner
realised the confusion it was causing and
the ensuing brand damage and removed the
parrot. Now, the admiral stands alone, his
arms folded, from a viewpoint above us,
looking down at the consumer from the
vantage point of high military leadership and
of insurance supremacy. The brand embraced
its essential hierarchical identity (the brand
name arguably trapped it into that role), and
the original brand mark was returned to
and refined, conveying its essential heritage
clearly and unambiguously.
This is a classic example of the
importance of semiotics and understanding
the underlying brand communications
meaning. If Admiral had employed a semiotic
analysis prior to the campaign launch, it
would have avoided the damage caused by
a culturally contradictory parrot, ensuring
clarity of meaning and prompting internal
considerations by the brand team of what
identity and meaning they wanted to adopt
and communicate about Admiral.
While there is always considerable pause
before any campaign is green-lit, might
there be value in brand guardians bringing
a semiotic mindset to their thinking more
frequently? Even if it’s for a brief period
of reflection, the impact can be significant.
Following the sorts of processes outlined
above, a basic system can be put into
place every time you are faced with new
executions:
 Define and separate the individual images
in a campaign – from the font to the setting,
to the protagonists and their clothing.
 Explore the potential cultural meanings
inherent in those different elements/images.
 Investigate the cultural context
surrounding the brand – both national and
international cultures.
 Analyse whether the intended message
is aligned with those potentially different
cultural meanings – both within the campaign
and in the broader cultural context.
 Analyse the imagery and test it to expose
any unsuspected contradictions.
 Ensure the meaning of the campaign
travels across national boundaries.
 Do some/all of the potential meanings
undermine the ability of the consumer to
understand the key brand benefit/value?
 Refine the creative execution (imagery
or language) to ensure alignment between
campaign and culture.
Employed in this way, semiotics becomes
a necessity, both strategically and creatively,
to understand the complexity of a message,
protecting the brand from inflicting damage
on itself, but also preventing others from
using the ideas in the same way. Semiotics can
help craft and refine creative output, ensuring
the most appropriate imagery and narratives
are adopted for optimum brand benefit.
This article was first published in
Admap magazine March 2014 ©Warc
www.warc.com/admap