Beneath Brand Strategies, Forms of Life (Part II)

Approaches to the semiotics of brand are troubled by the lack of any accepted analytic definition of the phenomenon, as well as capacious, almost metaphysical, extensions in which brand becomes identified with semiosis as such, and thus everything is a brand. In addition, studies of brand tend to focus on highly visible or successful brands, as often as not as a proxy for a real object of analytic interest that lies elsewhere. Brand discourse defines brand in opposition to the material properties of the product, leading to a dematerialization of brand, which erases the messy materialities, contingencies, and hybrids that continually arise in the material semiosis of brand. Rather than attempt a definition of brand, the recent literature on brand semiotics is explored along several material and semiotic dimensions of the variousness of its relationship to its universes of circulation and in different professional discourses and historical and cultural contexts.

Semiotica, 2024

Since the mid-1990s, brand specialists have relied on a variety of institutionalized and relatively undisputed brand strategies. However, a semiotic examination of these strategies reveals contradictions about the concept of the brand, which call them into question. The objective of this article is to highlight the theoretical and practical challenges linked to brand strategies, so as to develop a renewed-and specifically semiotic-approach to the concept of the brand, here defined as "a service with a vision of its own." Apart from offering a renewed definition of the brand, this article proposes to consider any type of economic organization (companies, subsidiaries…) or solution (products, lines, offerings…) as a service. Moreover, it introduces two opposite types of services ('sovereign service' vs. 'adjunct service') to capture all the possible brand relationships between companies, subsidiaries, products, lines, and ranges. Lastly, it refutes the idea that two brands can equally mark a product or communication, laying the foundations for a new brand architecture model structured in accordance with semiotic guidelines. More generally, the article aims to promote the use of Greimasian (post-)structural semiotics in brand management to enrich reflection and improve practices.

Some of the most important semiotic galaxies that constitute human contemporary Umwelt comprehend those concepts corresponding to entities that populate the daily life of common citizens, constituting objects (goods and services) that have become essential to different lifestyles. Brands are semiotic objects. As all semiotic objects they are culturally laden meaning carriers that once created generate and become the centre of a dynamics that is actualised in the interplay with their potential consumers and the definition of their own markets. Keywords: semiotic object, brand, semiosis, brand management, brand methodology

The Journal of Brand …, 2010

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Approaches to the semiotics of brand are troubled by the lack of any accepted analytic definition of the phenomenon, as well as capacious, almost metaphysical, extensions in which brand becomes identified with semiosis as such, and thus everything is a brand. In addition, studies of brand tend to focus on highly visible or successful brands, as often as not as a proxy for a real object of analytic interest that lies elsewhere. Brand discourse defines brand in opposition to the material properties of the product, leading to a dematerialization of brand, which erases the messy materialities, contingencies, and hybrids that continually arise in the material semiosis of brand. Rather than attempt a definition of brand, the recent literature on brand semiotics is explored along several material and semiotic dimensions of the variousness of its relationship to its universes of circulation and in different professional discourses and historical and cultural contexts

2012

Abstract: A kind of habit is still available in the world of marketing practice looking at brands as completely dependent on economic logic, as secondary element of general marketing activity. Despite of the formal common consent saying that brand is a powerful tool in sales policy and provides priceless long-term contact with consumers, only short list of publications on this realm includes explanation on how given brand reaches its audience and, which is even more important, how it affects it. The following material aims to pass over the classical definitions and to enter in one usually neglected but full with potential ‘alley’ in branding. The main point is the realization that brand is a communication phenomenon whose existence is a result more from attitude and active position of its addressee than from the brand management’ steps. The lack of a physical basis makes brand virtual entity and its nature is an object of study of social psychologists, cognitive specialists and anthropologists but in the field of ‘communication’ main role plays semiotics, whose advantages and perspectives are underlined in the next lines. Key words: brand, commercial communication, applied semiotics, functions of language.

Cases on Branding Strategies and Product Development: Successes and Pitfalls

Most theories in brand management, evolved from 20th century economics, rely on a convenient assumption of how consumers should make purchase decisions. In contradistinction, this chapter demonstrates a semiological tradition in the context of brand management using a 128-year-old brand, Muthoot Group, to expound upon the ways consumers prevalently perceive brands, which then drive their purchase decisions. Just as in marketing, where the focus changed from “economic exchange” to “social exchange,” in brand management the focus needs to change from “symbols” to the way people use semiotic resources to produce both communicative artifacts and events to interpret them, which is also a form of semiotic production. Since social semiotics is not a self-contained field, the chapter historically plots the brand-building voyage of Muthoot Group, applying semiotic concepts and methods to establish a model of brand and extend the scientific understanding of differentiation, loyalty, and advoc...

Contemporary marketing literature overwhelmingly describes brands from either a managerial or a consumer-centric perspective. The level of analysis is either individual or social. In most cases brands are conceived as tangible or intangible objects. Another stream of research conceives brands as mental representations or socially shared meanings. Each perspective has provided rich insights but bears the danger of being restrictive. Attempting to integrate extant knowledge the paper first presents a brief review and discussion of how the brand phenomenon has been approached in the literature. Secondly, it proposes an integrative perspective, which conceptualizes a brand as encompassing brand manifestations, brand meaning, and a brand interest group that co-produces brand manifestations and co-constructs brand meaning in an ongoing public discourse. Finally, the implications of such an approach for future research and brand management are discussed.

Design Management Review, 2010