Using Semiotics in Marketing

How to Achieve Consumer Insight for Brand Growth and Profits

Rachel Lawes

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781789662078
• eBook ISBN: 9781789662085
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Business

In what can seem a complex, abstract field, this book is an invaluably clear, practical resource on how to seize the tremendous opportunity that semiotics offers to better understand your consumers. Semiotics is big business. It is most famous for its unique ability to decode visual images and is the only market research method which provides a systematic, reliable and culturally sensitive method for interpreting what visual images mean. Semiotics sheds new light on consumers and the world they live in, stimulates creativity and innovation, guides brand strategy, and finds solutions to a plethora of marketing problems. Using Semiotics in Marketing will help marketers looking to launch new brands, reposition existing brands, or rejuvenate established ones. Written by one of the original founders of commercial semiotics, Using Semiotics in Marketing outlines precisely what semiotics is and why it matters, before moving on to demonstrate how to run a successful commercial semiotics project. Packed with fascinating case studies proving how visual imagery is interpreted differently across cultural, racial and social demographics, it provides essential insights into understanding consumers. This results in better ads, websites, packaging and social media content - ultimately driving brand growth and profits.

Index

Page numbers in bold indicate Glossary entries

99 Cent (Gursky, 1999) 229–30

activities

build a meme 123

challenge the taken-for-granted 171–72

decode an image 74

decode language 78

find a code 85

find your challenge 28–29

find your truisms 109–10

grow it or shrink it 174

identify a brand opportunity using a semiotic square 115

make strategic recommendations 184–85

multi-method research 164–66

prepare a report or debrief 197–98

quality-check your work before distribution 204–05

technology and your next project in semiotics 218

top-down analysis 103–04

twig-to-branch 128

write a brief for semiotic research 39–40

write a proposal 61–63

your own semiotic field trip 148–49

Adamou, Betty 192

advertising 9

animations 78–79

anthropology 12, 56, 111–12, 220–21

Apple Inc 13–14, 183

architectural codes 84

architecture, product design and 226–27

art and design

codes which originate in 82–83

conceptual art 91

design codes in China 83

fine art 91

graphic design 227–28

inspiration from contemporary art 172–73

interior design codes 84

minimalism 83

modernism 83, 138, 139, 226, 227

pop art movement 173–74

product design 226–27

semiotic analysis of art works 91

visual art 227–30

artificial intelligence 214–16

art–science binary, debate over the position of semiotics 208–10

Audition (1999) 230

augmented reality technology 212, 217

authenticity of marketing 9–10, 15

Baby Boomer generation 2, 213

baked beans project

bottom-up semiotic analysis 88

brief for shopper engagement resear...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement
• Titlepage
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• About the author
• Foreword by Daniel Sherrard
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 01 Semiotics will change your career in marketing or market research
• 02 An explosion of semiotics in business
• 03 How to do research using semiotics: A blueprint for marketers
• 04 Images, language and other semiotic signs
• 05 Society, culture and other big influences on consumers
• 06 Creativity and innovation: Semiotic tools for thinking
• 07 How to do semiotic field trips
• 08 Combining semiotics with ethnography and discourse analysis
• 09 Data – insight – strategy
• 10 Sharing the findings of semiotic research
• 11 Industry debates and the future of semiotics
• 12 Inspiration: How to continue teaching yourself to do semiotics
• Glossary
• References
• Index
• Copyright