Commercial semiotics accepts that “everything communicates”.
It recognizes the importance of cultural context to brands. Brands do not exist in a vacuum or even simply within their immediate competitive set.
Brands are cultural texts and products are cultural objects; as such, they are received and interpreted by consumers in multiple and ways. The same pair of Nike hi-top trainers can signify physical prowess through a connection with professional sports and urban culture, but they can also signify feminism through the representation of strong, able women.
Unfixed in meaning, they can even signify criminality through their connection with gangster rap. Meanings depend on the surrounding cultural context and often despite the intention of brand architecture and strategy.
Crucially, culture and brand communications are not experienced as separate entities by consumers – they share a context and overlap.
Historically commercial semiotics helps brands ensure communications are effective and consistent within their cultural and commercial context. However, hugely successful brands such as Nike are also creators of cultural contexts and category conventions.
Commercial semiotics can help brands strategically ‘own’ a piece of culture by identifying trajectories of change in culture and commercial categories from the residual (dated) to the dominant (mainstream, what consumers typically play back in research) through to the emergent (cut-through, the future mainstream). By tapping into themes from emergent culture, brands can own or create what will become mainstream culture. Staying ‘one step ahead’ in this manner promises both relevance and resonance.
With the rise of digital we find ourselves in a culture that is converging, mutating and developing rapidly in non-linear and less predictable ways.
Brands can no longer use fixed and universal channels of communication and digital is equipping consumers with an abundance of new choices, empowering them to re-define a brand’s meaning.
UK insight agency Space Doctors are reacting to the shifting contexts brands find themselves in by evolving semiotics to engage with digitally enabled research methods – calling the merging of these methodologies ‘Live Semiotics’. In order to efficiently put this into practice, Space Doctors has developed Cymbol – an app for Live Semiotics.
Cymbol is a simple photo and video-sharing app. The app is designed to facilitate rapid, immersive, live documenting of culture (including the commercial elements). People are comfortable expressing themselves through images on a digital platform and responses are less likely to be influenced by others. Distance offers anonymity, mobile platforms facilitate rapid responses with less ‘editing’ and therefore responses are more ‘raw’ or honest. These are the advantages and methodological strengths of mobile research.
Cymbol can capture and track the shifts in cultural contexts as the users respond to themes and questions.
Semiotics can identify moments of meaning perception and creation surrounding consumers and brands.
Because the method of analysis is semiotics, recruitment is selective. The appropriate data is not quantitative in focus or led solely by a consumer demographic or segment.
Seeking the identification of emergent culture as it emerges means gaining an insight into the lives of the people who actively ‘create’ change in culture.
Given these goals, Live Semiotics connects with ‘cultural catalysts’ and ‘cultural experts’, people lead the process of meaning making and interpretation within their market or demographic.
When it comes to commercial questions, respondents may not consume the product or brand in question but they are the ones who actively shape its cultural context.
Insight is not purely trends based. Just because a ‘cool’ person likes a particular food or venue does not mean it will have longevity or real resonance in all the cultural noise. What Live Semiotics looks for is patterns of reactions to cultural stimulus.
In a recent project looking at ‘self belief’ for women globally respondents were asked to find distinctive, emotive examples of ‘female confidence’ and specifically, which visual aspects resonated with them. Analysis identified how these elements are then repeated across different respondents’ uploads and markets.
Live Semiotics taps into the growing desire for creative consumption and ‘prosumption’ that surrounds contemporary brands and culture. It offers a way for market research to pro-actively work with those consumers who are leading the evolution of all-important brand contexts.
By leveraging the opportunities that digital research holds, commercial semiotics brands can anchor themselves in grassroots culture and consumer interpretations.
By Gemma Jones, Project Director at Space Doctors.
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