Brand meaning: Decoding the signs

Alex Gordon
Admap
March 2014

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Brand meaning: Decoding the signs

Alex Gordon
Admap
March 2014

Brand meaning: Decoding the signs

Alex Gordon
Sign Salad
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.
Semiotics 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.

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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 assessed as an intangible
asset worth $20 billion far more than the tangible asset of its car manufacturing business.

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
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
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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; ginghamwearing, 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
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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-the-line 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 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
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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:
l

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.

About the Author

Alex Gordon is founder and CEO of Sign Salad, a cultural insight and semiotics agency. He has conducted international multimarket semiotic analyses across most industry sectors and was previously head of semiotics at Flamingo, the international
branding agency.
alex@signsalad.com

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