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
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.
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
Process and Outcomes: The Semiotic Tree

Input for: Qualitative Research,

Marketing, Comms, Design & NPD

Insight & Inspiration: Ideas for Brand & Product Evolution

New Brand
Metaphors
Brand Needs
and Codes
Emergent Codes

Current Brand Codes and Meanings

Current Competitive Codes

Popular Brand History

Cultural & Equities
Codes
Deep
Deep
Sector
Culture
Discourse
What we’re not….
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
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
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

Cultures are built by codes

• cultural codes are the rules and QuickTime™ and a

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conventions that govern

communication, interpretation,
behaviours and attitudes

• codes are the contexts that allow QuickTime™ and a

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us to make sense of signs

• codes change over time

 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…
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

Signifiers:

“e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t”
(arbitrary)

(iconic)
Encoding Elephants

• Dumbo

• Sabu’s pet

• Nellie

• Babar

• Elephant and Castle

• Elephant Man

etc etc
Signs are therefore energetic and dynamic…

Signifiers may point to different symbolic signifieds for

different interpretive communities….
Texts within culture also have an ‘unconscious’

Author’s Intention Consumer Interpretations

Conscious Meanings Conscious Meanings

Unconscious Meanings Consumer Unconscious

CULTURAL MEANINGS
 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

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…
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

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
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)

• '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….
We did a paradigm… And found that Pot Noodle was not exactly one thing
or another…

Snack Real Food

Silly Serious
Kid Adult
Rubbish Quality
Impulse Planned
Individual Collective
Cheap Not so cheap
Instant Gratification Deferred gratification
Motion Sedentary
Inauthentic Authentic
Out of home In home
Insubstantial Substantial
Intense Taste Hit Grown Up Flavours

Snacks simply subvert real food values – what if Pot Noodle perverted food
values instead?
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….
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
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….
Slag of All Snacks

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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
 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’
 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)
 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
 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
 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?
 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
 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…
 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!
 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…
 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…
Rexona Tattoo Ad

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Exploring Calvin Klein

Calvinism and Kleinian Psychoanalysis - a serendipitous approach

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 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….
Exploring Calvin Klein
So what does modernism look like?

Modernism can be: Formal

Minimal

Industrial

Experimental

Shocking

Melancholic

Fascistic

Emancipatory

Difficult

Elitist

Disruptive
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

 3. Investigating Sex and Calvin Klein
GUCCI SEXUALITY CALVIN KLEIN SEXUALITY

Pure Raunch Pure Passion

Transgressing boundaries Flirting with boundaries

Woman as herself / part of a sexual unit with partner but

Woman as prostitute (but enjoying this role) eg: Gucci G in
pushing boundaries within that unit e.g Christy Turlington
pubic hair /women in what looks like hotel bedroom
Escape ads

Brash Classic/modernist

Loud Intense (ie. within herself rather than having to shout about it)

Screaming orgasm Silent all-over full-body experience

External sexual expression Internal sexual expression

Individualistic (my pleasure, my orgasm) Dualistic (happier with a shared soul-to-soul experience)

Fluid: ever changing, playing with multiple roles at any one Linear: on a joint sexual journey (even though the ending is
time: post modern unknown): modernist

Classic example: Gucci Envy & Rush Classic example: Obsession

 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…
 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…
 Calvin Klein Aesthetic Accountability Mechanism

Calvinist Aesthetic
Emotional/Interpersonal Process
Intensity
Irreducible to single meaning

High Modernism New Name Erotic Potential

and Concept

Cultural
Fragrance Values
Salience/Intrigue
 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

Modernist Factor

• echoes of 'the flanneur', a disengaged but fascinated city wanderer

• modernist theme of the unreliable nature of perception and memory

 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

Concept Imagery
Draft Consumer Concept

Between waking and dreaming there is

only ‘Name’, waiting to wipe the slate
clean once again….

‘Name’– a fragrance that frees us from

Ourselves….
Moving from Truth/Crave to Euphoria
Euphoria TV Ad

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