semiotics
TheFuture
3 Simple Steps To
Uncover
I In 1996, Montana released a new variety of wine
– Azure Bay – in a blue bottle. It was innovative
and daring – but it wasn’t to last. After a short
and exciting spurt of popularity, Azure Bay was
off New Zealand shelves in 2004. If you’re really
keen, you can still get it, but only from a cask
and only in the United Kingdom.
Montana knew that wine in a blue bottle
would be a fad. But if they hadn’t, and had
counted on it being a long-term trend... heads
would have rolled. How can a marketer tell
the difference between a genuine trend and a
passing fad? The simple answer, believe it or
not, is semiotics.
As we discovered in the March issue of NZ
Marketing Magazine, semiotics is a controversial
and involved subject. Apparently. But when ap-
plied to some real-life scenarios, semiotics can
become not just easier to understand, but the
source of competitive advantage, and wealth.
I know, I use this stuff in my role as an entre-
preneur and guy who does innovation.
Entrepreneurs are instinctive semioticians.
They create products nobody ever knew there
were needs for, because they discerned the
latent need (laed) in the marketplace.
Most traditional marketing ignores laeds, in
favour of the easier-to-discern overt (oveeds)
24 w w w. m a r k e t i n g m a g . c o . n z . M a y 2 0 0 7
and covert needs (ceeds). Overt needs are easily
uncovered – just use quant and qual research.
People are aware of their needs, and they tell
you how to fill them, end of story.
For ceeds, a combination of qualitative
research and anthropology should do the
trick. Many household cleaning brands ‘watch
people’ to discover how their products fail, and
how they can improve them.
For laeds, traditional research – qual or quant
– won’t get you anywhere. It’s about a leap of
faith. But it’s not blind faith. In fact, this is faith
with its eyes wide open.
Great entrepreneurial breakthroughs like
superior customer experience on an airline
(Virgin), one-stop home maintenance (Green-
acres) and even floral fabric softener were not
proven ideas until somebody stepped out and
tried them. Now their appeal and marketability
is self-evident.
Why did these products survive – thrive, even
– while only 20 percent of product research
gives accurate predictions, even with clever
quant people? There are too many variables.
It’s time for a little magic.
Semiotics is the science of codes. Why is it
funny when a kid swears in church? Because
that action breaks an unwritten rule. Comedy
reveals society’s codes by breaking them. Just
watch Borat.
So how do you uncover the codes for your
sector? Break them.
Take a pen and paper and – I’m absolutely
serious here – think of how you could abso-
lutely ruin your brand. What would you do?
What messages would you deliver? How would
you deliver them? Which messages would you
deliver to which audiences?
By now you’ll start to see the unwritten rules
or codes that govern your industry sector. It’s
important to know there are three types of
codes – residual, dominant and emergent.
Dominant codes are the rules we know
about, and expect to be followed. For mobile
phones, it means your phone is used to text or
call people.
Residual codes are the stuff we expect, but
don’t notice until they’re not there. For in-
stance, the residual code around mobile phones
is that they’re ... well, mobile. It’s just a given;
nobody thinks about it much.
Emergent codes are, as the name suggests,
about what is new and emerging. For instance,
the emerging code for cellphones is the mini-
computer. It’s now a given that phones will do
more than just text and make voice calls.
 semiotics

Now let’s take the opposite tack on the cat-
egory we started with: wine.
The dominant codes around wine tell us good
quality wine comes from a glass bottle, and is
drunk from a wine glass. Yes, you can get wine
from a paper tetra pack, but it’s not considered
‘good’ wine.
The residual codes determine the colour of se-
rious wine bottles – green for white wine, clear
for red. Not blue, as Montana discovered. Blue
worked for a short time, but it was a fad.
What are the emergent codes, the ones that
will last? How about this for the wine world:
new world wine is dealing to old world wine,
because the egalitarian ethos of the West is
sweeping away all the perceived ‘nonsense’
You’ll see this reflected in wine labels. For
centuries wine labels bore the imprint of the
chateau from which they came, creating an
aspirational image of aristocratic wealth for
the wine drinker.
New world wine has had to reach for new
symbols of sophistication, a way of articulating
a sense of social origin with the same sense of
aspiration. They’ve found it in art, whether it’s
a stylised rendition of the brand name (think
Kim Crawford) or an evocative visual image of
the name (think Jacob’s Creek or Montana).
Let’s go back from codes to the needs we aim
to meet as marketers. Remember, not all needs
are equal. There are oveeds, ceeds, laeds, and
one we haven’t mentioned yet: creeds (cre-
Vox pops, qual, qualt and quant are great ways
to uncover oveeds and laeds. That’s what I
call insight.
However, a few facts point to the lessening
impact of insight tools. Forrester Research notes
that 47 percent of US consumers viewed ads as
interruption. Globally, growth in the research
industry has become totally flat, except in the
developing markets.
What does this mean? We use new tools
for a new century. Watch this space for more
information on Skope©, Consumer Made©,
Actea© and Commection©. They will pro-
vide 21st century breakthrough approaches for
finding new needs and connecting consumers
to them. m

about knowing your wine. It’s now about ated needs).

Jake Pearce is a consultant semiotician.
common sense. For different needs, there are different tools. jake@jakepearce.com

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