Building strong brands with structuralist rhetorical semiotics
2-hour seminar at the 12th IASS World Congress, New Bulgarian University, Sofia September 19th 2014
Building strong brands with structuralist rhetorical semiotics
George Rossolatos MSc, MBA, PhD
email: georgerossolatos123@gmail.com
Seminar objectives
The seminar on ‘Building strong brands with structuralist rhetorical semiotics’ is intent on discussing crucial conceptual and methodological challenges that were faced while constructing a novel approach to brand equity planning. Brand equity constitutes the pinnacle of branding research and the hallmark of applied brand management. It is both a process and set of S.M.A.R.T objectives with regard to how strong brands may be built and maintained over time. At the heart of brand equity lie brand associations. Brand associations have been amply theorized and operationalized in marketing research from a cognitive psychological point of view. However, the relationship between the diachronic deployment of a brand’s figurative language and its semantic nucleus has been unduly scrutinized. This seminar will display step-by-step how strong brands may be built and managed over time with the aid of structuralist rhetorical semiotics. By drawing on the conceptual construct of consumer-based brand equity, from a marketing literature point of view, and superior linguistic value, as its semiotic counterpart, the model of the brand trajectory of signification reinstates the time-hallowed generativist model that was initially put forward by Greimas and Courtés in a connectionist vein. The suggested 9-step methodological framework is intent on operationalizing the connectionist rendition of the trajectory of signification by adding dynamism to the morphologically and syntactically distinctive components of the trajectory. The suggested methodological framework focuses on the strength and uniqueness of brand associations as integral aspects of a brand’s equity structure and comprises a set of calculi that aim at addressing from a brand textuality point of view how associations may be systematically linked to their key sources with an emphasis on the ad filmic text. The framework draws on two pillars, interpretative semiotic analysis and content analysis. The qualitative research design is facilitated by quantitative analysis techniques, also featuring multivariate mapping, with view to adding rigour to the process of pattern generation, in quest for sources of differential figurative advantages, but also of modes of co-variation among semic and figurative elements of brand discourses. The benefits of adopting a brand textuality perspective in brand equity planning will be highlighted in line with the conceptual/methodological framework that underpins the connectionist approach to the brand trajectory of signification.
Indicative references
George Rossolatos (2014a). Brand equity planning with structuralist rhetorical semiotics. Kassel: Kassel University Press.
George Rossolatos (2014b). A methodological framework for projecting brand equity: Putting back the imaginary into brand knowledge structures. Sign System Studies 42(1): 98-136.
George Rossolatos (2014c). Exploring the rhetorical semiotic brand image structure of ad films with multivariate mapping techniques. Semiotica Vol.200: 335-358.