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Hidden meanings of semiotic marketing

PICTURE this. You see a bright red Porsche parked on the side of the road. What is your firstresponse? Do you associate the car with status, wealth or perhaps prestige? Would your initial

reaction be different if the Porsche was white in colour? And would you have the same opinionof a banged up Mazda?

Welcome to the world of semiotics, where signs and symbols carry a range of culturalconnotations, often quite apart from their literal meaning.

Bryony Ranford, associate director of Melbourne marketing company Added Value, says

marketers can get a leg up on their competition and bring their brands to life through semiotic

marketing.

She says consumers are already demanding more innovative and challenging communication

from brands and semiotic thinking will be "just common sense" in the 21st century.

"Brands are based on an evolving mass of hidden meanings and associations," she says. "In

mature markets, semiotics can be helpful in understanding what a competitor is doing and canalso be used to analyse the cultural and competitive context that a brand operates in."

Graeme Turner, of the University of Queensland, says marketing and advertising are two prime

examples of semiotics at work. "The main thing that semiotics provides is the idea of the sign, of

reducing all communication to being a process made up of the combination of small units, whichthey call the sign," he said in an interview with Michael Dwyer of the Radio Open LearningSeries. "And the sign is used as a way of talking about communication across media and various

contexts and various languages that are used to communicate."

In the context of marketing, semiotic analysis goes some way towards revealing the culturalinfluences at play. "Advertising is perfect as an explanation of the way semiotics works, because

what ads do is pick an image or a symbol or a representation, and then try and connect it withsomething they want to," Turner says.

Take the marketing of beauty products, for example. How many times have you seen a young,

attractive women marketing a brand of make-up or "talking up" the pulling power of a fragrance?

In many instances, the aim is to connect beauty products with the brand values of youthfulness

and radiancewith the underlying suggestion that the purchase decision will in some wayenhance the consumer's life.

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The pain relief category is also an example of how semiotic analysis can be applied to marketing.The word "migraine", for example, carries a range of connotations and may be seen as

everything from a "woman's problem" to a sexual excuse.

Packaging and the use of colour also have a role to play in shaping consumer perceptions of

brands in this category. Using primary colours to market pain relief products may conjurefeelings of anger, frustration and pain, while more serene colours could well have the oppositeeffect.

Understanding the cultural context that a product operates in opens the door to informed decision

making and marketing opportunities, according to Ranford, who has worked with big-namebrands in the personal care, alcohol and fruit juice categories. Daniel Chandler, author of the

book Semiotics for Beginners, agrees.

"Searching for what is 'hidden' beneath the obvious can lead to fruitful insights," he says.

"Semiotics can help to make us aware what we take for granted in representing the world,

reminding us that we are always dealing with signs, not with an objective reality."

Dr Malcolm Evans, a leading UK semiotician, stresses the need for marketers to understand

brand context. "The imperative in developed markets is for brands to be innovative," he says."There is a need to understand the full context in which innovation takes place, given that

consumers expect brands to be leaders and can not tell us the direction this innovation shouldtake."

Any analysis of the cultural context that a brand operates in should also focus on cultural

sensitivities. "The movement towards global brand positioning calls for sensitivity inunderstanding the implications for local markets and cultures and the strategies for

communication," Evans says.

"The use of semiotics can give reassurance that a brand is being built with the help of rational

structures within which creativity and intuition may safely operate."

Semiotics opens the gateway to a richness of meaning and to be forearmed is to be forewarned,according to Chandler.

"A working understanding of key concepts in semiotics--including their practical application--

can be seen as essential for everyone who wants to understand the complex and dynamiccommunication ecologies within [which] we live," he says. "Those who can not understand such

environments are in the greatest danger of being manipulated by those who can."