Semiotics of brand equity george rossolatos brand equity,semiotics
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Towards a semiotics of brand equity: on the interdependency of meaning surplus and
surplus value in a political economy of brands
George Rossolatos
«The commodity achieves its apotheosis when it is able to impose itself as a code, that is, as
the geometric locus of the circulation of models, and hence as the total medium of a culture
(and not only of an economy)» (Jean Baudrillard, For a critique of the political economy of the
sign, p.206)
Introduction
To announce a semiotic approach to branding and by implication to the study of brand equity
is equivalent to a tautology. And yet, it is through this tautology that semiotics emerges as one
of the proper fields of research for brands as marks or σημεία/semeia and branding, as
process whereby products (commodities) assume meaning in acts not only of financial, but
even more foundationally of semiotic exchange.
The focal points of this paper rest with (i) demarcating branding discourse as a field of
marketing research through the metalanguage of semiotics, (ii) the delineation of the signs
and signifying practices of this discourse and its key terms, such as brand, differential brand
positioning, intended and received positioning, brand elements, primary and secondary brand
associations and brand equity in semiotic terms (iii) applying semiotic key terms, such as
sign and code to the study of brand equity and revealing their potential operational value in
managing brand equity (iv) explaining in semiotic terms why brand equity is equivalent to
surplus of meaning and why brand stretching or brand extensions as a brand’s combinatorial
possibilities can be accounted for by means of a theory of the code(s) (v) discussing why and
how the conceptual rigor of semiotics may contribute to brand equity research, thus
constituting an indispensable brand management tool.
Overview of inter-textual transfers between branding and semiotics
The bulk of research in the wider field of marketing semiotics has been concerned with
advertising and not with branding, even though the latter constitutes the starting point for
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making sense of advertising. Based on the assumption of the «autonomy of the sign»1,
advertising messages have been analyzed extensively by drawing on their dimension as
cultural signs and by implication by drawing on brands as cultural (eg. McCracken 1986,
Williamson 1978, Stern 1996;1998), rather than commercial products. Despite the
unquestionable validity of such readings from within cultural theory, media theory and
semiotic perspectives, and the plethora of resourceful insights that have been generated in
the process, interest on behalf of marketing researchers in operationalizing semiotic concepts
in addressing various marketing phenomena has been limited, with the exception of
Hirschman and Holbrook’s The Semiotics of Consumption, Jean Umiker Sebeok’s editing of
the collective work Marketing Semiotics (a collection of papers on various applied semiotic
approaches to marketing, such as consumer behavior, advertising, corporate image, new
product development), Mick’s and McQuarrie’s extensive publications on semiotic approaches
to decoding and processing advertising messages, J.M.Floch’s Sémiotique, Marketing et
Communication. At the same time, applied semiotics agencies have been flourishing over the
past twenty years, providing insights to marketing practitioners and generating interpretive
models by drawing on semiotic concepts. Yet, no uniform branding theory has appeared so
far with the inter-textual import of a robust conceptual framework drawing on particular
semiotic theories. Despite the operationalization of semiotic concepts in discreet areas of
marketing theory and practice, such as Floch’s (1990) application of Greimas’ semiotic
square in positioning studies, Kawama’s (1987) application of Peirce’s topline tripartite
conceptualization of the sign as index, symbol, icon into the process of product design and
coining of a ‘Color Planning System’, Kehret-Ward’s (1987) application of the Saussurean
concept of the syntagm in what he calls «syntagmatic marketing research» aiming to unearth
latent syntactical similarities in the way products are used and in their promotion/advertising,
while pointing to its operational value in the field of new product design, cross-promotions and
shelf strategy in retail outlets, McQuarrie’s (1989) interpretation of how ads resonate
meaning through the employment of figurative speech that transforms the relationship
between signifiers and signifieds in instances of verbal and visual signs, by drawing on
1 As Ransdell (1992:[6]) stresses by allusion to the Peircean notions of sign and interpretant «It is implicit in regarding semiosis as the production of the interpretant by the sign itself that signs are not regarded as being governed by rules in the sense of "falling under" them. The idea is rather that the disposition or power of the sign to generate an interpretant is the rule, which thus does not stand over and above the sign, as it were, but is rather an immanent principle therein. This is the basis for characterizing semiosis processes as autonomous or self-governing».
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Barthes’ Rhetoric of the Image, none of the existing semiotic approaches to marketing
phenomena has attempted to provide a conceptual platform for operationalizing the concept
of brand equity, which is the focus of this paper. Needless to say that the orientation of the
inter-textual grounding of a theory of brand equity in semiotics in the context of this paper is
foundational and by no means exhaustive as to the conceptual and methodological
implications of a full-fledged semiotic theory that is yet to come. As preliminary
methodological remarks in such an endeavor as a semiotic theory of brand equity Mick’s
following words of caution are taken on board:
«First […], there is a troubling tendency on the part of marketing and
consumer researchers to use terms such as semiotics or semiology in a
flippant manner […] Unfortunately, all too often these words [my note: signs
and communication] are raised in marketing and consumer research without
a reasonable discussion of which particular semiotic tradition or concepts the
research is drawing on, and even sometimes without any accompanying
references to major semioticians. Second, it is equally important that
researchers strive for greater rigor in applying semiotics. All too often
semiotic concepts and analytic approaches are not adequately clarified
before their implementation. As a result, the value of using semiotics is
ambiguous» (Mick, in Brown 1997:244).
Brands as signs
A brand is a sign or more particularly a super-sign in Eco’s terms: «Super-signs must be
considered as strictly coded expression-units susceptible of further combination in order to
produce more complex texts» (1976:231) . A logo as the sign of a branded product or the
brand identity of a brand name is a super-sign, as its components (eg. curves, lines, fonts,
words, colors) do not make sense outside of its strictly coded context. Individual components
as signs themselves may be tokens of different types, but in the context of super-signs they
do not assume meaning as tokens of general types, but as semantically hierarchized
components in the structure of the super-sign as sign system (eg a curve may be reproduced
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in an exactly identical fashion as a curve employed in the sign structure of a super-sign,
however it may not produce the meaning of the super-sign inductively simply by assuming the
place of an elementary component within the syntax of the super-sign). We might say that
individual signs making up a brand’s identity may be hierarchized semantically based on their
synecdochic potential of evoking the brand’s name in the absence of all other signs. For
example, Nike’s curve is a hierarchically superior structural component of the brand Nike, as
super-sign, as in the absence of all other elements synecdochically it may stand for the super-
sign’s name. By implication, a colored shoe without the Nike curve could by no means
connote the brand “Nike”. Would the same hold for the standalone presence of the curvy M
sign indicative of McDonald’s? Perhaps, but in a fuzzier sense, as the yellow and red colors
are inextricably linked with the curvy M. But amid a range of interpretive possibilities it would
stand a better chance of recognizability. Brand identity is not equivalent to branding and
certainly not homologous to brand equity, but it is a crucial component of a brand’s
architecture. What brands as super-signs point to is that brands function as cultural units in a
semiotic space as strictly coded gestalts or assemblages or constellations of signs that are
not meaningfully reducible to their elementary components, but wherein combinatorial
possibilities are allowed for. «The semiotic secret of brand names lies in the fact that they are
not simply indices but also symbols and icons. As an icon it evokes mental images of the
possible qualities of the product that are expected to be present in an item purchased with the
brand name. The quality of a brand is also a symbol that is associated with our knowledge,
experiences and our contact with that product» (Nöth,2010).
A further qualification of brands as signs is yielded by Nöth (1988:4) who contends that the
system of commodities forms a semiotic system par excellence, insofar as each product
category, as well as the ensemble of products as what Baudrillard would call a system of
objects, is structured like a language. Nöth proposes a threefold classification of brands as
signs, which he calls prototypical frames, viz. the utilitarian, the commercial and the
sociocultural frame, while adding a tentative fourth frame, viz. the psychological one, which is
not operationalized in Nöth ’s approach. Throughout the multi-frame approach he retains the
Saussurean/Barthesian bipartite nature of the sign as consisting of two planes, viz that of the
signifier and that of the signified, the former denoting the signifying form of the commodity,
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while the latter its concept(s). «The utilitarian commodity sign is associated with features
related to its practical use-value» (Nöth:op.cit.). Semiotic features of the utilitarian sign
comprise «technical reliability» and «economy». The commercial sign signifies the [financial]
exchange value of a commodity «in relation to other products of the system of commodities»
(Nöth:op.cit.). The most direct indicator of this value is price. A brand functions as a
sociocultural sign when its consumer associates it with the sociocultural group(s) to which he
belongs. Most importantly, the frame to which a brand may be assigned is not a matter of
some sort of inherent properties. As Nöth observes, «the category to which a product
prototypically belongs is not inherent in the product itself, but empirically observable from the
predominant mode of consumption and from the genetic or historical primacy in the evolution
of the commodity» (Nöth:op.cit.).
In parallel with framing brands under three prototypical categories, Nöth (1998) also
distinguishes brands (and product categories) based on the Barthesian distinction between
syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes. «While the paradigmatic axis of a language refers to the
possible (e.g. lexical or semantic) alternatives of and oppositions to a sign, the syntagmatic
axis refers to its syntax, the rules for the combination of the signs» (op.cit.,italics in the
original text). Barthes himself exemplified this dual function of brands as signs alongside the
paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions by reference to the product category of furniture
(among other categories) in his Elements of Semiology, by stressing that the language of
furniture «is formed both by the oppositions of functionally identical pieces (two types of
wardrobe, two types of bed, etc.), each of which, according to its ‘style’, refers to a different
meaning, and by the rules of association of the different units at the level of a room
(‘furnishing’)» (1968:17).
The distinction between the syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions of signification is an
important theoretical tool in applied and theoretical approaches to marketing semiotics . As
Kehret-Ward points out, «in paradigmatic strategy the ad focuses on attributes which serve as
signifiers of the category in which the product is positioned and in syntagmatic strategy the ad
focuses on the product's ability to combine with related products in use» (in Sebeok,
1987:219).
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Differences and similarities between brand value and brand equity
Branding is an ongoing process. Brand equity is the periodic culmination of this process in
terms of brand value and the aim of the brand building process, viz added value for the
producer and shareholders, in terms of superior to the competition financial returns and the
consumer, in terms of increased satisfaction from the use of the brand. Brand equity is not
necessarily correlated with superior to the competition financial returns, but with a higher
probability of superior returns on the assumption that a differential positioning will translate
into differential mindshare and enhanced saliency, hence greater probability of choice.
What is the relationship between brand value and semiotic value?
Brand value is not the same as brand equity, rather brand equity is the plenum of different
types of value. How may value be defined in terms of a semiotics of brand equity? By
addressing it as the outcome of different levels of semiotic exchange that occur in tandem,
based on a brand’s partaking of different prototypical semiotic categories (utilitarian,
commercial, sociocultural), as above defined by Nöth.
The concept of value has been extensively scrutinized among semioticians and consumer
behavior theorists2 alike. Saussure in his Cours de linguistique générale offered a path
breaking analysis of why value is not inherent in a sign but to determinants of the sign
system, insofar as it opens up to the process of signification and the vertical relationship
between signifiers and signifieds to horizontal relationships between signifiers and signifiers
and signifieds and signifieds. «[…] a word can be exchanged for something dissimilar, an
idea; besides, it can be compared with something of the same nature, another word. Its value
is therefore not fixed so long as one simply states that it can be «exchanged» for a given
concept, i.e.that it has this or that signification: one must also compare it with similar values,
with other words that stand in opposition to it. Its content is really fixed only by the
concurrence of everything that exists outside it. Being part of a system, it is endowed not only
with a signification but also and especially with a value, and this is something quite different»
2 M.Holbrook spearheaded the consumer value research area from a consumer behavior perspective by drawing on the theory of axiology, defining consumer value as «an interactive relativistic preference experience» (1999:5) and coining a framework of consumer value, comprising six typologies or three continua, viz. extrinsic vs intrinsic value, self-oriented vs other-oriented value, active vs reactive value (1999: 9-13)
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» (Saussure 1959:115 )3. The value of a brand as a sign, therefore, «is accordingly
determined by its environment» (ibid:116) in a system of langue and based on relationships of
similarity and substitutability, prescribed by a system of horizontal (syntagmatic) and vertical
(paradigmatic) relations.
Thus, value as financial value may be defined by allocating a price to a brand as a
commercial sign, as a plenum of intangible assets (such as practiced by Interbrand and Brand
3 For the sake of clarifying Saussure’s argumentation regarding the initially postulated difference between «meaning»
and «value» in his Cours, which ultimately leads to a reduction of meaning to value, in the context of a general economy of signs as a context of relationships and exchanges, as well as to allow the arguments that emerge through this process of argumentative elucidation to function as the springboard for legitimating the ensuing key postulate of this paper that the signifying relationship is reducible to that between sign and signifier, in the absence of a signified in the context of a political economy of brands that functions through relationships among free-floating signifiers, I hereby proceed with the exposition of a set of circularities and contradictions in terms embedded in Saussure’s argumentation.
The interdependency between meaning and value may be unearthed by addressing the circularity of Saussure’s argument about whether meaning generates linguistic value or linguistic value is the cause of meaning . «[…] the choice of a given slice of sound to name a given idea is completely arbitrary. If this were not true, the notion of value would be compromised, for it would include any externally imposed element. But actually values remain entirely relative, and that is why the bond between sound and the idea is radically arbitrary» (1959:113). In the first and second above-quoted sentences, it is claimed that it is by virtue of the arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified that value is relative. In the third sentence, it is claimed that it is because of the relativity of linguistic values that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary. So, in order to demonstrate the axiom about the arbitrariness of the sign Saussure must first demonstrate that linguistic values are relative, but this relativity is incumbent on the demonstration of arbitrariness, which constitutes circularity. At least, what this passage shows is that the production of linguistic meaning and the production of linguistic value are interdependent. Earlier in the Cours he calls a sign a linguistic fact and in the section on «Values» he calls value a social fact. What the above argument shows is that these two types of «fact» are interdependent, however, due to the circularity of the argument, what does not appear clearly, is whether there is a causal nexus between them or just a relationship of mutual determinacy (if not co-extensiveness) .
By now addressing how signs assume value I shall demonstrate why (a) meaning and value are interdependent, and hence value arises due to the relative meaning allocated by a «community of interpeters» to signs, which meaning is relatively fixed in the context of exchanges among signs in a sign system or a general economy of signs (b) contrary to Saussure, meaning is not reducible to value or at least this postulate is defeasible. In order to demonstrate (a) and (b) I am drawing on the argumentation provided in Chapter IV (On Linguistic Value) and particularly the section on the value from the point of view of the concept of the signified (which, for Saussure, is of greater gravitas than the signifier- this is established, for example, in Saussure’s claim that «whether I make the letters in white or black, raised or engraved, in pen or chisel- all this is of no importance with respect to their signification» [1959:120], contrary to later theorists, such as Baudrillard, who reverse the relative importance between signifier and signified in an economy of free floating signifiers). How do signs and signifieds assume value ? The three major premises that bear the burden of proof in this section consist in the following (i) Meaning is not the same as value (ii) A sign assumes value in a system of values, which may not be reconstructed by adding up individual sign values (iii) But ultimately meaning is reducible to value (which contradicts i). Let us explore the validity of the statements that function as proof conditionals for the major premises. Saussure states that indeed value and meaning are often conflated and attributes this confusion to the «subtlety of the distinction». So there must be something wrong about this «subtlety». Let’s examine what this subtlety is and what may go wrong, thus giving rise to a confused definition.
The subtlety consists in distinguishing between vertical and horizontal aspects of relationality among signs that determine the «whatness» of which signs and signifieds (which are used inconsistently in this passage that should be concerned only with signifieds) «are counterparts». Saussure reduces signification to the vertical relationship of the signifier to the signified and value to the horizontal relationship of signs to other signs, signifieds to signifieds and signifiers to signifiers in a system of language.
First, In order to resolve this «paradox», Saussure resorts to an extralinguistic fact (the exchange of 5 francs for bread as a «real object»), viz that of monetary exchange and monetary value, which merely affords to add another plane of confusion, insofar as not only horizontal and vertical aspects of signs’relationality have not been established
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Finance), by comparing and contrasting it to other brands in the same system of signs; value
as the relative utility of owning and using a brand as a utilitarian sign by consumers or a
brand’s use or functional value that gives rise to and is in turn determined by primary brand
associations, in Keller’s terms4, by comparing and contrasting its use value against similar
products; but also sociopsychological value or the intangible aspects exchanged in the act of
owning and using a brand, which give rise to and are in turn determined by secondary brand
associations, in Keller’s terms (which may arise even in the absence of actual brand
ownership, through mere exposure to brand communications, packaging and word-of-mouth
yet, but resorting to an extralinguistic fact is contrary to what he explicitly assumed as the basis of his analysis in the beginning of this section, viz the word as linguistic fact and not the «real object». Thus when he introduces the exchange relationship between 5 francs and bread, conceived of explicitly as an extralinguistic fact he only affords to add confusion on another plane, that of the existence of extralinguistic facts, that is the existence of referents. And insofar as the linguistic counterpart of this exchange would amount to an exchange between the signified of franc and the signified of bread, that is an exchange of two dissimilar words at the similar conceptual level of the signified, the legitimation of the exemplary and analogical usage at the level of an extralinguistic referent renders the signified dependent on the referent. So another contradiction in terms emerges, viz that whereas in the beginning of the section Saussure states that the focus will be words and not real objects, which is question begging given that objects do not have signification outside of language, he uses as his key example an extralinguistic referent in the place of the signified.
Secondly, the confusion is augmented by attempting to prove that value is not fixed because of the fact that a sign can be exchanged with dissimilar things, viz a signified. But this type of exchange occurs vertically, and vertical relations are pertinent to meaning and not value. Moreover, in this argument another dimension is introduced in the signifying relationship between sign and signified, that of exchange. Up until now signified only related (in an abstract sense, not qualified as exchange) with sign by virtue of being the counterpart of a signifier in a relationship of signification. Now,the signified is postulated as being exchangeable for the sign (concept for word), rightly so based on the newly introduced principle that «words may be exchanged for dissimilar things», but fallaciously so insofar as no relationship of exchange amongst sign, signifier and signified has been postulated so far.
Third, by allocating the nature of complementarity to the vertical type of exchange in a system of exchanges that includes both horizontal and vertical exchanges assumes that the two «planes» are comparable, which does not hold, as it was postulated that signification and value are not the same, thus it is like complementing apples with grapes and summing up their total as ?.
Fourth, the proposition that «its [eg the sign’s] content is only fixed by the concurrence of everything that exists outside it» , assuming that content is equivalent to the sign’s value, would amount to the possibility of determining a sign’s value only upon comparison with all other signs’ values (insofar as value presupposes the existence of a value system that is not reducible to, but in excess of the sum of its parts). This argument is self-defeating insofar as (i) the «value» of a system of values has been defined in excess of the sum of its parts (ii) if a sign’s value may not be fixed unless compared to other signs’ values, then all values are by definition liquid and non-fixable and this postulate leads to infinite regress as «in order to determine the value of X one must first determine the value of Y but the value of value of Y depends on the fixation of the value of Z and so on ad infinitum». The example «mutton-sheep-mouton» does not afford to resolve the above regress insofar as it concerns a definite set of exchangeable signs , while the above stated conditional of «concurrence» of all values concerns an indefinite set. Thus, in order to determine the value of mutton vs sheep it is not sufficient to compare it to the value in another language, but one should compare it to the indefinite set of values of signs in the same language, that is mutton vs sheep vs rhinoceros vs chocolate vs my uncle’s hat etc. Thus, the culminating proposition «the value of each term depends on its environment» does not clarify whether environment is a definite set of signs that are exchangeable due to some sort of semantic contiguity (even though the example of mouton would suggest that there is a highly pragmatic dimension to the exchangeability among concepts as in the context of the example exchangeability is instituted in a «serving» predicament) or the entire set of signs making up a language. But, given the already stated impossibility of fixing the value of a sign or signified (which are used inconsistently in this section which is supposed to deal only with the value of the signified) unless a system of values is presupposed which is not the sum of its parts, then closing off the argument in a definite set of signs would contradict the openness of the system of values. Therefore, determining the value of a signified through the concurrence of all other values is both a contradiction in terms (given that the system is not the sum of its parts) and impossible, insofar as comparison does not necessarily occur within a definite set of signs (and if it were conditions of similarity should be introduced first).
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communication), and all sorts of hypotactically attributable to the above value territories,
which are indirectly reflected in brand valuation and evaluation processes in brand image
scores.
It is unlikely that one will encounter a pricing scheme stricto sensu for the aesthetic value of a
soap brand (which forms part of the sociopsychological value of a brand), yet this value is
reflected as part of a more general equivalence inscribed in the exchange value of the
Fifth, by extension, the concluding argument of this section that renders signification dependent on value (in contradiction to their non-identity, but complementary to and as a qualification of their initially interdependent nature) is defeasible. More particularly, Saussure concludes the section with the premise «If I state simply that a word signifies something when I have in mind the association of a sound-image with a concept, I am making a statement that may suggest what actually happens, but by no means am I expressing the linguistic fact in its essence and fulness». The proof for the validity of this premise is yielded in the immediately prior conditional statement (its conditionality rests with the fact that this minor premise was meant originally to lend credence to the major premise that «a sign assumes value in a system of values») «[…] it is clear that a concept is nothing, that is only a value determined by its relations with other similar values and […] without them the signification would not exist», which postulates two things (i) that the value of the signified is determined by other similar values, while the scope of similarity was found to rest with an expanded system of values, which transcends part-values (ii) signification is reducible to value, which is a contradiction in terms, given that value arises through exchanges and exchanges may occur both through similar and dissimilar things, thus signification as vertical relationship between signified and sign is not necessarily reducible to value as horizontal relationship between signifieds and signifieds. Thus, insofar as the conditional statement does not hold, the major premise does not hold either and the notion of «fulness» is not justifiable.
From the argumentation thus far it has emerged that based on Saussure’s terms or, rather, contradictions in terms meaning is not reducible to value , but they are interdependent insofar as the meaning of a linguistic fact assumes value as a social fact. Therefore, in order to qualify the mode of relationality between the two terms, it is not a matter of reducibility of one to the other, but a matter of irreducible exchangeability. Mouton makes sense as it is, irrespective of whether I am exchanging mutton for sheep in a concrete predicament of exchange between linguistic facts, while the linguistic fact is exchanged for a social fact when I exchange a piece of mutton for five francs or when I exclude a piece of rhinoceros and include a piece of mutton as part of a meal.
Regarding the possibility of dropping the signified without violating signification, Saussure distinguishes in his Cours between «real object» and «linguistic fact», which does presuppose the existence of the extralinguistic referent, which is not accounted for. I shall draw on this distinction in order to demonstrate why the signified may be dropped off the picture, just like the referent. «the signs that make up language are not abstractions, but real objects[…]The linguistic entity exists only through the associating of the signifier with the signified. Whenever only one element is retained the entity vanishes; Instead of a concrete object we are faced with a mere abstraction»(1959:102) This is a contradiction in terms . If signs as linguistic entities are also real objects, that is independent of the signifying relationship between signifier and signified, then they exist independently of the signifying relationship. But, according to Saussure, the necessary condition for the existence of the sign is the signifying relationship. So either the object does not exist as such or it exists through the relationship of two abstract entities, a signifier and a signified. If it does not exist as such, then it is not a real object and if it only exists as an abstraction then dropping any of the correlates of the signifying relationship will not make a difference insofar as it exists only as an abstraction and according to Saussure, dropping either the signifier or the signified would reduce the object to a mere abstraction. So, unless additional argumentation is provided about the extra linguistic reality of the object, then we may assume that the sign is an abstract entity and as such there is no necessity why both signifier and signified should be retained. Thus, dropping the signified off the picture does not make any difference to the signifying potential of a self-subsistent relationship between the sign and its signifier. Given that the relationship between sign and signifier is self-subsistent, the «real object» as referent vanishes . Thus we are left only with relationships between signs and signifiers. The referent does not exist outside of language, but only as a sign/object in a signifying relationship with its formal properties as signifier and insofar as by virtue of their purely abstract nature dropping the signified off the picture will not affect the signifying potential of the relationship, then the signified becomes redundant. Why not drop the signifier ceteris paribus? Because the signifier is the carrier of the formal properties of the sign, thus responsible for its recognition and without it there would not be a way of recognizing the sign as such. The fact that the signified is not a necessary correlate in the relationship between sign and signifier becomes even more forcefully apparent in the political economy of signs and particularly in a political economy of brands. The most eminent example of such relationships is he fashion system, which is a case of free floating signifiers, as demonstrated in the ensuing section .
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hypothetical soap brand. The sum of these latent equivalences constitutes the overall stature
of a brand in terms of brand image. Such composite or aggregate image scorings, in
combination with methods of importing perceptions of price elasticity, culminate in overall
brand values, not directly in financial terms, but as relative utilities that reflect an overall
«psychological value» of each brand and its standing or «differential positioning» vis a vis the
competition, as a langue or system of brands or differences and oppositions to itself.
Brand equity stands for the differential or surplus value between a brand’s book and market
value, in accounting terms, which difference resonates the differential positioning of a brand in
a langue as its semiosphere (as a plenum of primary and secondary brand associations, in
Keller’s terms), which resonates in its «psychological value», thus qualifying Nöth’sfourth
prototypical category as an aggregate of utilitarian, commercial and sociocultural values,
attached to it by consumers. Thus, surplus of meaning is reflected in surplus financial
value in the concept of brand equity.
The concept of brand equity is equivalent to a promise of safety for consumers and superior
future financial returns for shareholders. From a semiotic perspective, though, safety opens
connotatively to a promise to consumers that the layers of meaning either currently held by a
brand or potentially taken on board and making up its value, will not erode. What is called in
the respective literature "brand equity erosion" denotes precisely the phenomenon of a
brand's losing its semiotic salience among consumers.
The potential of acquisition of equity by a brand as surplus of meaning, as it will be shown in
the ensuing sections, is incumbent on their successful leverage of Code(s).
Code as the necessary and sufficient condition for the production of brand meaning
What is exchanged in the product category of fashion, simply put, is money for pure form or money for relations between a sign (eg a dress) and its symbolic properties or its brand image.
The above exposition of the circularities and contradictions in the Saussurean rationale and the critique ensuing thereupon resulted in (i) dropping the necessity of the signified from the signifying relationship (ii) maintaining the signifying relationship between sign and signifier (iii) arguing for the impossibility of fixing the value of a sign by comparison to other signs by virtue of this leading to infinite regress (iv) proving that by virtue of the system of signs’ being in excess of its parts exteriority does not refer simply to another sign, but to a non-appropriatable surplus of the system (to which I shall return in the closing argument of this paper about absolute exteriority as what lies beyond the upper semiotic threshold) (vi) demonstrating how Saussure introduces the «real object» as extralinguistic referent through the back door.
4 K.L.Keller employs the distinction ,in hjs brand equity system, between primary brand associations, viz. «product-related attributes and/or functional benefits» (1998:508) and secondary brand associations, viz. «non-product related attributes and symbolic or experiential benefits» (1998:515)
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«A code is […] the set or system of rules and correspondences which link signs to meaning
[…] Coded realizations of meanings can themselves be recoded […] Socio-cultural norms and
conventions can, rather generally, be thought of as codes, such as dress codes, politeness
codes and institutional codes of practice» (Cobley 2001:170-172).
In essence brand equity stands semiotically for the ability of a brand to capitalize on a code or
on a multiplicity of codes, as necessary conditions for the production of signs (Eco, 1978). In
fact, as it will be demonstrated, the vantage point and at the same time destination for
unlocking the conceptual potential of brand equity and concomitantly putting it to work in its
multifarious operationalizations, consists with an elucidation of the semiotic concept of a or
the code .
The extent to which this semiotic transformation will be attained is incumbent on the degree of
fit of a cultural code, as depth grammar or always already ordered cultural practices as texts,
with brands and their producers, as addressers of signs and consumers as addressees and
partakers of a code or consuming subjects.
Thus, the code as an oblique point of reference at the intersection of signs and subjects as
instances and instantiations of the code, constitutes a meaningful surplus that overdetermines
the degree of semiotic fit between addresser and addressee. The conceptual reflex of this
intersection at the level of brand’s potential for leveraging code(s) is imprinted in brand equity,
insofar as it is concerned with the same surplus, as financial value purporting to measure
meaning surplus. Therefore, the concepts of brand equity and the code are
interdependent.
Brands as dynamic semiotic entities erode in terms of their equity not because of or at least
not necessarily because of their functional and/or non functional attributes, as indices and
symbols erode, but due to the fact that codes mutate, sediment, transgress their boundaries
and the relative appeal of their combinatorial configurations changes. In an era of proliferating
new product development mortality rate and easiness of copying brand attributes and
elements, the only source of sustainable competitive advantage and hence guarding against
equity erosion, may be yielded by attending closely to codes. The invaluable import of brand
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semiotics as a bona fide standalone field of research lies primarily with its being attentive to
the systemic function of code(s) as the underpinning of brand equity.
In order to understand the allegedly cryptic nature of the notion of «code» as used in
semiotics (which use varies among semioticians themselves, as amply illustrated by Nöth
1990:206-221) and disentangle the concept from its more often than not uncritical
employment in common parlance it is deemed mandatory to differentiate between the mode
of discourse of semiotics in toto from that of cognitive psychology, on which brand equity
related marketing research has largely drawn thus far. Whereas at the center of cognitive
psychology lies the subject as processing unit of external environment stimuli, as a stable
substratum underpinning meaning making processes, at the center of semiotics lies the
subject as an already coded carrier of cultural patterns, value and belief systems5. Even
though the application of a mechanistic , Cartesian outlook of the subject as non localized , a-
contextual mind machine is useful in the face of the demand for analytical rigor and the
compartmentalization of various strata of message elaboration, semiotics assumes a more
dialectic outlook on the formation of the subject, as an assemblage of given cultural patterns
and as the outcome of an ongoing enculturation process.
The epistemological and ontological assumptions embedded in these vastly divergent
paradigms surely lie beyond the focus of this paper, however it is crucial to account for them
even at such a sketchy level, which will enable us to make sense of the notion of the code, of
a code’s giveness and why, as aforementioned, insofar as brand equity points to the limit of a
brand’s potential (its added value), its inherent excess is tantamount to the excess of the code
as brand meaning surplus.
Prior to drawing further parallels between brand equity and the concept of the code, the latter
must be demarcated conceptually and its structural properties must be qualified, otherwise
the concept is operationally of limited value and risks being reduced to an empty signifier. In
order to elucidate the concept I shall draw on three thinkers who have dealt either directly
from within a semiotic paradigm or indirectly, by employing semiotic concepts in the context of
their theoretical constructs, viz. Baudrillard and his early to mid period writings, Derrida’s
5 For a thorough elaboration of the constitutive mechanisms responsible for the formation of the subject and a critique of the Cartesian cogito and by implication cognitivism in toto, see Silverman, 1983, Ch.4
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oblique reference to the code in the context of his reply to Searle’s criticisms as appeared in
Limited Inc and Eco’s qualification of the concept in his early to mid period writings. For
Baudrillard,
«what happens in political economy is this: the signified and the referent are
now abolished to the sole profit of the play of signifiers, of a generalized
formalization where the code no longer refers back to any subjective or
objective `reality,' but to its own logic. The signifier becomes its own referent
and the use value of the sign disappears to the profit only of its commutation
and exchange value. The sign no longer designates anything at all. It
approaches in its truth its structural limit which is to refer back only to other
signs. All reality then becomes the place of a semiological manipulation, of a
structural simulation. And whereas the traditional sign... is the object of a
conscious investment, of a rational calculation of signifieds, here it is the
code that becomes the instance of absolute reference" (1975:7). «There is no
end to the consumption of the code» (1975:10).
The key concept underpinning the function of the code, as may be inferred from the above
extracts, is self-referentiality and the absence of an originary signified to which signifiers are
attached. The abolition of the signified and the reduction of the latter to the plane of the
signifier in the context of the political economy of the sign or commercial discourse as part of
a langue of brands, contrary to the initial qualification of the function of brands as signs by
reference to the planes of the signifier and the signified (as would be postulated by Saussure)
constitutes a valid operative hypothesis in this paper, and has also been endorsed by Eco, as
will be illustrated in due course. The code may be likened to an abstract machine6, to use
Deleuze’s metaphor, which produces signifiers that make sense in the context of the code’s
own structural limit, which is limitless. There is no autonomy in the object qua referential
reality outside the signifier qua epiphenomenon of the code, save for a «social logic»
(Baudrillard 1981:68) that is responsible for the generation of codes as models responsible for
the production of signifiers. What Baudrillard calls «social logic» as a sort of informal logic
6 ‘The […] abstract machine does not function to represent, even something real, but rather constructs a real that is
yet to come, a new type of reality’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 142).
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responsible for the production of signifiers without any need for rooting in a system of objects
outside the code resonates a common place across various semioticians and semiotic
theories, from Saussure to Greimas and from Eco to Leeuwen and Kress, viz that signification
or how sign-vehicles assume meaning is a matter of social conventions, which confer relative
stability between a set of signifiers and the sign in which they are inscribed. Baudrillard does
not qualify further the determinants of this social logic in his For a Critique of the Political
Economy of the Sign. However, in The Consumer Society he stresses that “in the logic of
signs, as in that of symbols, objects are no longer linked in any sense to a definite function or
need. Precisely because they are responding here to something quite different, which is either
the social logic or the logic of desire, for which they function as a shifting and unconscious
field of signification” (1998:77). Thus, the kind of social logic to which Baudrillard alludes may
be conceptualized in Derrida’s terms as “structural unconsciousness”, as will be
demonstrated in due course. In terms of brand equity language, Keller’s secondary brand
associations may, thus, be rendered as secondary non functional signifiers attached to
brands as super-signs without any necessary relationship to primary, functionally related
signifiers. Baudrillard’s employment of the example of the refrigerator is indicative of this
crucial difference:
«1. The refrigerator is specified by its function and irreplaceable in this
respect. There is a necessary relation between the object and its function.
The arbitrary nature of the sign is not involved. But all refrigerators are
interchangeable in regard to this function (their objective "meaning").
2. By contrast, if the refrigerator is taken as an element of comfort or of luxury
(standing), then in principle any other such element can be substituted for it.
The object tends to the status of sign, and each social status will be signified
by an entire constellation of exchangeable signs. No necessary relation to the
subject or the world is involved. There is only a systematic relation
obligated to all other signs. And in this combinatory abstraction lie the
elements of a code.
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3. In their symbolic relationship to the subject (or in reciprocal exchange), all
objects are potentially interchangeable…The symbolic material is relatively
arbitrary, but the subject-object relation is fused. Symbolic discourse is an
idiom. (1981:68-69, my emphases).
What the above passage makes clear is that the product as brand, once dislocated from its
strictly speaking functional usage and inserted in a general economy of signs, not only may
take upon any sort of signifiers, but, as a sign it is exchangeable with other brands qua signs,
for the same sort of signifiers. In this instance Baudrillard retains the fundamental elements of
the Saussurean model of value, viz that signs are exchangeable for similar (other signs) and
dissimilar (eg signifiers) things, but not only overturns the model in terms of the relative
importance of signified versus signifier as constituents of the signifying relationship (cf ft.3),
but does away with the signified altogether, while allocating what would be exchangeable at
the level of the signified to the combinatorial possibilities of the code. The exchanges that
take place in such a political economy of brands or objects as symbolic materials7 that are
exchanged for concepts or abstract signifiers (eg luxury, based on the above quoted
example) are prescribed as possibilities through the code as horizon of signifying possibilities.
Moreover, the above passage opens up another dimension of the political economy of
brands. Insofar as there is no necessary relationship between sign and signifier, and given
that signs may be exchanged for signifiers, brands may be exchanged for any signifiers or
secondary brand associations. But also, different brands may be exchanged for the same
signifier, which is why a political economy of brands does not amount only to a general
economy of signs, but also a general economy of signifiers.
7 The use of the term symbolic in this instance and by implication the statement that «symbolic discourse is an idiom» by Baudrillard seems to draw on symbol as a special case of sign, based on Saussure’s analysis. «One characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; It is not empty for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified» (1959:68). In the same fashion that brands constitute symbols, albeit without a natural bond between sign and signified , but as motivated and non-arbitrary signs whose signification consists in investing super-signs with signifiers through the process of intended positioning in a calculated relationship of strict codedness, they also constitute onomatopoeic formations (Saussure 1959;69). Again, whereas for Saussure onomatopoeic formations constitute marginal cases in a linguistic system, in a political economy of brands with its own langue, such instances constitute the norm (onomatopoeia not only constitutes an indispensable function of an advertising agency, but there are agencies specializing in coining brand-names). Each brand is a symbol and by virtue of its self-referential strict codedness it is idiomatic. By extension, the more a brand tends to institute itself as a code, the more its idiomatic langue attains to colonize a natural language. A political economic system in which all exchanges would be branded would amount to the substitution of a «natural language» with aspects of idioms.
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Additionally, even though there is no necessary relation between the sign of the refrigerator
and its signifier, but this correlation is a matter of cultural contiguity, hence the validation of
the «arbitrariness of the sign», that assumes a necessary status through repetition and
through a genealogically traceable giveness of the code to which it belongs, the distinction
between necessary and systematic relation Baudrillard draws is operationally useful from a
semiotics of brand equity perspective insofar as it points to the fact that brand differentiation
in essence does not occur at the first level of semiosis in the context of a sign’s practical
usage, but at the secondary level of semiosis, where a sign enters the semiosphere of
abstract signifiers in a system of interchangeable objects. In a similar vein, this may also
explain why Floch, by reversing Keller’s hierarchy between primary and secondary brand
associations (not explicitly so, insofar as Floch did not establish a direct dialogue with Keller),
contends that base brand values, or primary brand associations, do not consist of utilitarian,
but of sociocultural ones (thus anchoring his argumentation in Nöth ’s prototypical categories
classification; cf. Floch, 1990:131). It seems that the more removed from its function as a
utilitarian sign a brand is, thus opening up to the possibilities of being invested with abstract
conceptual signifiers making up the semiosphere of codes, the more it is capable of investing
itself with higher equity, thus rendering the horizon of appropriation of the signifying limit of
the code equivalent to the possibility of higher equity. Thus, brand equity is tantamount to the
approximation of a high semiotic threshold.
In this context, what is interchangeable is not necessarily a salient set of directly competitive
signs, but indirectly competitive signs according to a predominant social logic based on which
codes are woven as «contingently necessary» amalgamations of second order signifiers.
Thus the value of the product does not rest solely with the exchange financial value of the
sign, but, even more importantly, with the exchange value of the signifier, which is determined
through a systematic relation with other signifiers. This value system as set of systematic
relations is the code and given that systematic relations ramify endlessly the code is the
limitless limit of itself or its own surplus value. By analogy, and this is perhaps the closest
Baudrillard gets to drawing parallels between the concept of the code and the notion of brand
equity, «the commodity achieves its apotheosis when it is able to impose itself as a code, that
is, as the geometric locus of the circulation of models, and hence as the total medium of a
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culture (and not only of an economy)» (1981:206). The surplus or added value denoted by the
concept of brand equity concerns precisely this potential of a brand to institute a code, to
overdetermine this code as a set of differentially relating signifiers and not necessarily
differential signifiers, while at the same time delineating a horizon of semiosis over and above
what is already given in a semiotic structure. «It is the specific weight of signs that regulates
the social logic8 of exchange» (1981:66).
Baudrillard’s most forceful exposé of the systemic function of the code with reference to a
particular product category appears in Symbolic Exchange and Death, where he equates
fashion with the enchanting spectacle of the code (1990i:87-99). Why choose fashion as the
most eminent exemplification of the systemic function of the code and reduce the relationship
between the code and its constituting the necessary and sufficient condition for the production
of signifying units as encountered in various product categories to the relationship between
the code and fashion? «They [note: all product categories] are all haunted by fashion, since
this can be understood as both the most superficial play and as the most profound social
form- THE INEXORABLE INVESTMENT OF EVERY DOMAIN BY THE CODE" (1990i:87). In
fashion "as an entirely self referential cultural field, concepts are engendered and made to
correspond to each other through pure specularity" (1990i:91). Whereas in the case of verbal
semiosis the code emerges through signifiers as a reflex, in the case of fashion the code
emerges simpliciter as depth grammar and surface structure at the same time, thus
constituting an exemplary simulacrum of infinite semiosis itself. Interestingly, Baudrillard
equates fashion with «mode» in the sense of trope (it should be noted that «la mode» stands
for fashion in French). Fashion, thus, constitutes the cultural inscription of the logical category
of modality and in general the field of modal logic and the intersection of rhetoric, or at least
its tropical aspect, with formal logic; as façon it is phenomenologically similar to the
Heideggerian concept of mode-of-Being (in fact if one substituted Being with Code,
Heidegger’s existential analytic might as well function as a semiotic analysis of the systemic
function of the Code) or a Wittgensteinian aspect of seeing, which do involve specularity at
their very semantic core. «There is no longer any determinacy internal to the signs of fashion
8 The same sociocentric approach to the way signs assume meaning is assumed by Eco; « semiotics is concerned mainly with signs as social forces» (1976:65); « la sémiotique ne s’íntéresse aux signes que considérés comme forces sociales» (1972:62)
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hence they become free to commute and permutate without limit» (1990i:87). «It exercises an
enormous combinatory freedom» (idem) and thus constitutes, one might argue, the ideational
limit of brand stretching. Baudrillard seems to be suggesting that whereas it appears as a
pure play of signs, it affects deep structures such as sex, status, identity, which corresponds
to the aforementioned chain of signifiers making up the semiotic fabric of a brand, which
allows for inter product category comparability. In fact, deep structures are projections or
redundancies brought about by the play of signifiers on the surface structure: not a matter of
investing an a priori signifier with determinate signs (eg status with a suit) but of feigning the
reduction of the pure play of signs into immobile signifiers- the ideational expressive fixation
or sublimation of cultural praxiological content.
Another crucial point raised by Baudrillard concerns the epistemological status of the
dissemination and reception of signs. Baudrillard employs instead of traditional analytical
cognitive categories, that are typical of approaches in the more general field of the philosophy
of Mind, interpretive categories, such as «fascination» (in For a critique of the political
economy of the sign), «enchantment of the code» (in Symbolic exchange and death),
«passive magic» (in Simulation and Simulacra), in an attempt to encapsulate the fact that the
appeal of signs and the formulation of judgments about their «truth value» and pragmatic
relevance is not necessarily the outcome of a rational calculus, but the outcome of habituation
and enculturation into codes, reminiscent of a Bourdieuan Habitus at play.
«It is the cunning of the code to veil itself and to produce itself in the
obviousness of value. It is in the "materiality" of content that form consumes
its abstraction and reproduces itself as form. That is its peculiar magic. It
simultaneously produces the content and the consciousness to receive
it (just as production produces the product and its corresponding need).
Thus, it installs culture in a dual transcendence of values (of contents) and
consciousness, and in a metaphysic of exchange between the two terms»
(1981:119, my emphasis).
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Consciousness, instead of constituting the immobile substratum/processing unit responsible
for the compartmentalization of an illusory signified under analytical categories, according to
Baudrillard, is itself a product of the code, just like the content that is processed through it.
A similar point regarding the epistemological status of the code was drawn by Derrida in his
response to Searle’s performativity theory, as formulated in Limited Inc, where he claims that
«there is no such thing as a code - Organon of iterability - which could be structurally secret.
The possibility of repeating and thus of identifying the marks is implicit in every code, making
it into a network [une grille] that is communicable, transmittable, decipherable, iterable for a
third, and hence for every possible user in general» (1988:8). A key property of the code,
thus, is iterability or its ability to appear as such implicitly through its manifest marks. In
alignment with Baudrillard, it is not some sort of an a priori depth grammar that conditions the
possibility of identifying a relative constancy between signs and signifiers, but an a posteriori
inference based on patterned and recognizably so recurrences of signifying chains. However,
that might constitute a precarious reconstruction of Derrida’s relatively unqualified argument.
As himself stresses «I prefer not to become too involved here with this concept of code which
does not seem very reliable to me" (1988:10). He returns to the notion of the code by using it
as the condition of the meaningful iterability of a performative utterance by posing this
rhetorical question "could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a
"coded" or iterable utterance?". Derrida seems to be setting forward this point assertorically,
yet indirectly in a questioning format, perhaps in order to avoid a sort of reductionism of the
code, hence appearing as liable to criticisms against inherentist structural properties of texts,
against which much of his deconstructive attempts are oriented. Also, the bracketing of the
lexeme /coded/ seems to aim at retaining its meaning in suspense, as a yet non identifiable
sign, whose metatheoretical import purports to elucidate as a heuristic device the fact that
utterances make sense by virtue of their iterability in discrete contexts. Assuming this
bracketing as interpretively valid we are compelled in turn to qualify the sense of this extra-
linguistic, perhaps conventional codedness as condition of the possibility of sense making of
performative utterances. «Is codedness in this instance to be perceived as semantic
codedness or as a contextual codedness?» Let us recall that for Derrida there is no such
thing as univocal meaning, save only for contexts (without anchorage). Furthermore, Derrida
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contends that oratio obliqua would not be possible to be excluded. In fact, he reverts to oratio
obliqua in order to "elucidate" the isotopy between iterability of the code and cultural
ordinariness, by the cryptic assertoric proposition that "ordinariness shelters a lure" . Thus,
indirectly Derrida lays claim to the function of ordinary language as inevitable polar attractor,
as, what he calls "structural unconsciousness", which prohibits any "saturation of the context".
Bearing in mind that for Derrida there are only contexts, and that the notion of the code, if
possible, would imply a radical non closure and a radical situatedness, then insaturability
would amount to the impossibility of laying bare the code as arche-context, which may also be
read as the impossibility of presencing of the prefix "cum" that comes alongside the text.
Even more interestingly, he employs a similar to Baudrillard rhetorical stratagem in his
oblique reference to the code as «lure» sheltered in ordinariness, rather as an analytical
principle conditioning the appearance of phenomena. Etymologically, «lure» includes the
seme «decoy» (based on Webster lexicon) and in Middle Higher German it used to denote
«bait». Also, its derivative «allure» denotes to «entice by charm of attraction». Both of the
above, which resonate Baudrillard’s predication of cunningness of the code, are included in
his argumentation on how signs function through a logic of seduction and lay claim to the
manner whereby the code constantly transposes itself or abduces itself in an attempt to pin
itself down deductively, hence its insaturability.
In so far as constellations of signs, using Benveniste’s term for signifying units, signify by
virtue of the exclusion of other constellations, that is by their exclusion and their negation, the
horizon of signifying possibilities may be likened to an horizon of absolute negativity. The
surplus of meaning as abstract potentiality for appropriating more signifying constellations is
tantamount to the possibility of appropriating the entire horizon of negativity, hence becoming
all inclusive, at the ideal limit where all signs and constellations will have been syntagmatically
juxtaposed, none left out. The concept of brand equity points precisely to that horizon of
negativity as potentiality of appropriation of surplus meaning. Differential positioning, thus,
constitutes a difference in itself, or provisional identity, as the springboard for opening up to
absolute difference and the appropriation of the surplus of meaning. It is of no surprise that
brands with high equity provide meaning even through extreme cases of polysemy, whereas
for small brand players this would amount to a diffuse positioning and an inability to carve a
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distinctive mindscape. The higher the equity, the closer a brand to infinite semiosis, and the
closer to instituting itself as code, the more likely it is to keep surfacing as univocal depth
structure underneath the play of surface signs, therefore the higher its exchange value (not
only in financial terms, but also in terms of the security –shelter- provided by the very
partaking of the code that lures).
Despite Baudrillard’s and Derrida’s insightful descriptive remarks on the systemic function of
the code, it is not yet clear what is meant by the concept /code/, other than a heuristic
metaphorical device capable of pointing obliquely to the limit of semiosis as combinatorial
possibilities among signs, and how brands assume equity qua potentially instituting
themselves as codes. Thus far it appears that the notion of the code constitutes an ostensive
sign, that is a sign that is pointing towards an abstract horizon of combinatorial possibilities,
which in itself constitutes a step forward compared to the as yet unaddressed issue of the
relatedness among signifiers making up the fabric of a brand’s equity, yet being wanting in
operational terms.
The theory of Code(s) according to Eco and how it contributes to a semiotic approach
to brand equity
Eco’s conceptual contributions are instrumental in elucidating the above. Throughout his
Theory of Semiotics he employs the Hjelmslevian dyadic semiotic model, by equating signs
with sign functions, connecting two functives, that of content and that of expression9. «A sign
is everything that, on the grounds of a previously established social convention, can be
taken as something standing for something else» (1976:16). Signification, for Eco, does
not necessitate the realm of the signified and is exhausted in the multifarious relationships
between signs (or sign-vehicles, which terms are used interchangeably by Eco) and signifiers,
stretching throughout the planes of denotation and connotation (even though the former is
reducible to the latter in the context of infinite semiosis).
The function of the notion of the code in Eco’s theory is systemic. It constitutes a meta-sign,
standing for the «cultural glue» that unites sign-vehicles into cultural units. Despite the fact
9 Even though, in essence, Hjelmslev’s model is tetradic insofar as he allocates two additional planes , one to each correlate of the dyad, viz. that of form and that of substance. For the sake of simplicity and interpretive clarity the model will be adhered to in its topline dyadic dimension.
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that no coherent definition of the code is offered throughout the Theory of Semiotics, while the
concept is constantly elaborated as the argumentation progresses through various areas of
research within the general field of semiotics, certain definitional patterns allow for a sketchy
classification of definitional approaches to the concept of the code, which appears
occasionally like a deus-ex-machina in various instances of syllogistic aporias, veiled in what
Derrida called the inevitability of oratio obliqua.
«A code is a set of signals ruled by internal combinatory laws or a syntactic system, a set of
notions, a semantic system, a set of possible behavioral responses» (1976:36-37). Eco
embarks on the definitional journey of the code by opening it up to all aspects of a message’s
transmission process, spanning an initial state of a set of signs as a semantic system, the
explicit or tacit rules allowing for the combination of sign vehicles into meaningful gestalts and
the addressee of these gestalts as an already coded recipient of meaningful gestalts
(reminiscent of the code’s ability, according to Baudrillard, to provide both the content and the
«consciousness» for its interpretation). By virtue of the code’s all encompassing nature, «one
can thus alter the structure of both the content and the expression system, following their
dynamic possibilities, their combinatorial capacities- as if the whole code by its very nature
demanded continual reestablishment in a superior state, like a game of chess, where the
moving of pieces is balanced out by a systematic unit on a higher level» (Eco 1976:161).
However, such an all-encompassing definition risks meaning nothing or at least not being
operationally useful, while being reducible to stating the obvious. A preliminary qualification
regarding the semantic dimensions of the code is yielded by Eco by differentiating between
«Code» simpliciter and «system-codes» or «subcodes»10 (henceforth denoted as «s-codes»).
«An s-code is a system of elements, such as syntactic, semantic and behavioral ; a code is a
rule coupling the items of one s-code with items of another» (1976:37-38). In La structure
absente he also refers to «code» (simpliciter) as Hyper-code (1972:111; he also employs the
descriptor «Ur-code» in the same work, 1972:203), a descriptor, which disappeared in the
Theory of Semiotics. In order to render the nature of the s-code more concrete interpretively
10 The abbreviated form of «s-code» according to Eco’s terminology seems to correspond to «system code», even though no formal definition is furnished in the Theory of Semiotics that explicitly links «s» with «system», but it is more narrowly inferred as such through the definitional contours. Benveniste, however, uses explicitly the term «subcode» in the same fashion as Eco’s «s-code». Insofar as Code (simpliciter) – and in this case I add the qualifier «simpliciter» in order to distinguish the definition of Code as such from s-codes, in the same fashion as Nöth (1990) adds the qualifier «proper»- is also of systemic nature, but functions at a more abstract and all-encompassing level compared to s-codes, I am retaining the term «subcode» wherever «s-code» is operative.
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let us take for example the s-code or the consumptive occasion called «family table». A family
table is an s-code, there is a manifest syntax (ordering of spoons, forks, knives, plates, seats)
that signifies an intrafamilial bonding occasion as consumptive occasion and certain modes of
comportment of the participating members towards the elements of the syntax. Based on
Eco’s theory this is a structure or a cultural unit. It is an elementary unit of analysis insofar as
it is self-subsistent with its particular combinatorial rules and semiotic boundaries, eg if
someone danced on the table instead of eating cereals, he would not be perceived as
partaking of the s-code called familial table. If the forks were placed in the vase they would
still not be perceived as parts of the syntax of the familial table. The existence of a set of
plates on a table by itself is not suggestive of an instance of the s-code called family table. It
is the plenum or gestalt of the (i) individual sign-vehicles (ii) the tacit rules for their ordering
(iii) the manifest syntax of their ordering (iv) the pre-reflective, automatic comportment of the
participating subjects towards the requirements and background expectations of the occasion,
that confer to this semantic system the nature of an s-code. This set of background
expectations also justifies Eco’s assertion about the «giveness of the code» , which might as
well be rendered as a pragmatics of the code, as a matter of learning and enculturation,
rather than a matter of inherent semantic properties of elementary signifying units. In
comparison and contrast to a cognitivist approach, such as Husserl’s, the forks and plates on
the family table do not assume meaning due to a transcendental ego’s intentionality that
appropriates for itself as yet unformed stimuli from some sort of unqualified materia prima by
bracketing phenomena through epoché, but due to the pre-phenomenological giveness of s-
codes as intersubjectively shared and subjectivizing conditions11. «S-codes are systems or
11 In an attempt to reappropriate the explanatory preponderance of how objects and phenomena assume meaning from the field of anthropology that was gaining ground over transcendental phenomenology in the 1930’s, Husserl employed the term «transcendental intersubjectivity», as an operation that allows the world to appear identical for everyone (a communalized transcendental life) (Husserl 1931:10). Complementary to the apparent question begging nature of this heuristic device as a way out of a syllogistic aporia it points on the inverse to what would be dispelled by Husserl as naive empiricism or naive realism, viz an attempt on behalf of a discipline such as structural anthropology to replace transcendental phenomenological principles as explanatory of the formation of empirical objects and how they assume sense with a set of cultural practices in the light of which the giveness of the empirical world is safeguarded. By the same token, this criticism might be launched against a structural semiotic approach, which postulates uncritically the giveness of subcodes, against which one might formulate an argument of a so to speak «metaphysics of the code», accompanied by cryptic operative terms such as «deep articulatory matrix» (used by Eco). In fact, potential criticisms might be launched against either side of the transcendentalist/naive empiricist divide (either under the guise of a realist or a soft nominalistic approach, such as the one endorsed by Eco) by post-structuralism and critical theory proponents, based on which the relative univocity of sense-making vis a vis phenomena is the outcome of power relationships among social networks members and, rather than a product of a direct reflexive relation of «like-minded» transcendental egos, an instance of the asymmetrical distribution of information, genealogically discernible contingencies (which may be unearthed through sociological interpretations), impression management tactics and the very critical abilities of an «interpretive community’s» members to challenge the set of interpretants or signifiers that are stringed after individual signs. In this respect, a structuralist theory of codes may withstand criticism insofar as mutation and sedimentation of subcodes is envisioned as a «genetically» inscribed possibility. Moreover, insofar as signifiers are not predicated of signs in the context of rational calculi, but
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structures that can also subsist independently of any sort of significant or communicative
purpose» (1976:38). It is a relational concept, “which appears only when different phenomena
are mutually compared with reference to the same system of relations» (op.cit.). These
systems are usually taken into account only insofar as they constitute one of the planes of a
correlational function called a ‘code’. Through this distinction between code (simpliciter) and
s-codes, Eco seems to be suggesting that the latter is some sort of overarching Ars
Combinatoria that allows for the multiple disjunctions, conjunctions, intersections among the
various s-codes. « A semiotics of the code is an operational device in the service of a
semiotics of sign production» (1976:128). «Codes provide the rules which generate signs as
concrete occurrences in communicative intercourse» (p.48), «the conditions for a complex
interplay of sign functions» (1976:57).
Eco recognizes that the notion of the code is an operational device in the service of the
production of signs. Insofar as signs by themselves do not signify (at least in the context of
commercial discourse, in which brand equity is situated), unless they are conceived of as
parts of one or various s-codes and given that s-codes consist of combinatorial rules for the
production of signs, we may infer that signs constitute combinatorial entities. If signs may not
be conceived of apart from their combinatorial ordering in various s-code syntaxes, signifiers,
as their structural properties, are also dependent on s-codes. Also, insofar as code
(simpliciter) allows for the constant redistribution of signs among sign systems and the
reordering of s-codes, signifiers also open up to the plane of infinite semiosis . Additionally,
insofar as code (simpliciter) stands for a surplus of meaning as an inherent multiplicity of
combinatorial possibilities among s-codes, and having established that brand equity is
equivalent to the code as added value or the surplus in the exchange of a brand qua coded
product, then the higher the equity the more open a brand is to the plane of infinite semiosis
as combinatorial possibilities among s-codes and by implication as intra s-code combinatorial
possibilities among signs making up an s-code.
rather in the context of a process of enculturation, hence constituting cultural units, rather than logical propositions, claiming that the univocity of meaning is a matter of some sort of «tacit agreement» among transcendental egos, which would amount to the same processing of individual phenomena through the various functions of a transcendental logical mechanism (imagination, apperception etc) is at best an unverifiable idealist assumption. Insofar as the code furnishes the consciousness, as Baudrillard stressed (even conceived of at such a schematic level, just like the concept of «social logic» or Searle’s pragmatic mandate that behind the condition of the meaningful iterability of a speech act lies the replication of the same sort of intentionality) responsible for interpreting phenomena or making sense of phenomena in a particular manner or within a fuzzily coherent conceptual scope, the postulate of a «transcendental intersubjectivity» is at best self defeating in terms of verifiability.
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In order to render the notion of the code more operationally concrete and relevant in the
context of a semiotics of brand equity, allusion to the derivative notions of overcodedness,
undercodedness and extracodedness is of particular interpretive value.
Overcodedness is tantamount to the closure of meaning or to the maximally elaborated coded
interpretation of a constellation of signs. «The operations of overcodedness, when completely
accepted, produce an s-code. In this sense overcoding is an innovatory activity that
increasingly loses its provocative power, thereby producing social acceptance» (Eco 1976:
134). Overcodedness is a necessary condition for the recognition of the interpretive stability of
sign-constellations and it operates as a stabilizing social force or a dominant social logic.
«Undercoding may be defined as the operation by means of which in the absence of reliable
pre-established rules, certain macroscopic portions of certain texts are provisionally assumed
to be pertinent units of a code in formation, even though the combinational rules governing
the more basic compositional items of the expressions, along with the corresponding content
units remain unknown» (Eco 1976:135-136).
Extra-codedness lies in between over and undercodedness and includes the extra semiotic
and uncoded determinants of an interpretation. The as yet unfamiliar to a code elements are
potentially inscribed in a given code (or manage to institute a wholly new one) primarily
through a play of inferential probabilities, which correspond to the logical operation of
abduction. To continue with the example of the family table, dancing on the table may initially
seem awkward. However, upon the potential inscription of such a set of gestural signs in
movies or ad films a certain sort of familiarity of the representation is established or what has
already been called the security offered by partaking of the code (which lures subjects into
recognizing the giveness of a constellation of signs as meaningful in context). At first, some
«early-adopters of cultural insignia» may try this at home and thus initially marginally and
perhaps progressively (as an indication of a special achievement to be shared with the rest
family members or as a ritual of passage) institute this sign-vehicle in the constellation of
signs making up the s-code of the family table. In fact, a genealogical approach to cultural
practices would surely point to such instances of extra-codedness, where what initially
appeared as alien to an embedded cultural practice became its entrenched component. Let
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us not forget that repetition lies at the heart of a code’s coding. Thus, extra codedness is an
indispensable condition of a code’s expanding its combinatorial possibilities, «towards higher
levels of synthesis», as Eco stressed. «Abduction represents the first step of a metalinguistic
operation destined to enrich a code» (1976:132). Extra-codedness is a necessary condition
for brand meaning enrichment. It may be claimed that it occurs as an initially destabilizing
social force or an emerging supplement to an existing social logic, which is necessary for
innovation, brand stretching and the sustainability of brand equity.
It is by virtue of subcodes that signs assume meaning as cultural units. In order to understand
more clearly why codes are of the essence as explanatory devices for the meaningful
production of signs one should have to look at limit cases of sign and code production or
instances of extracodedness and undercodedness and instances of signs below the semiotic
threshold. Such instances constitute limit cases as transgressive of boundaries and
generative of types. An anthropological approach, such as Levi-Strauss’s, points to the fact
that every cultural system is based on a set of prohibitions and it might be claimed that a
cultural order subsists as such precisely due to a system of formal and informal sanctions that
lie at the very center of a cultural order as exchange values for transgressing its boundaries.
Prohibition as the failure to ascribe meaning betrays the dependence of sign production in
general on codes and the compulsory character of the latter, as a system of rules.
«Everything that lays claim to a certain compulsoriness exhibits a dependence on the dictates
of the pragmatic-political code» (Frank 1989:396).
The imposition of a sanction as a semiotic act implies the prior enactment of destabilization in
the interpretively shared correlation between the levels of content and expression, and
appears as the outcome of a transgression either at the level of content or expression or both.
It denotes that the semiotic act of circulating a transgressive sign or a code «was not meant»
to be or that the initiated sign may not be exchanged for one or more signifiers or that the
proposed exchange has already been instituted as prohibited. A mild system of prohibition
embedded in an act of exchange consists in buying a pack of candies and claiming social
status due to that pack’s possession. The claimant is prohibited by a cultural order the tacit
correlational rules of which bar the institution of such a correlation between the functives of
the sign. There is no subcode in the context of which such an exchange would be recognized.
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A heavy system of prohibition consists in the transgression of a traffic sign, in which case a
sanction is imposed not because a correlation has not been instituted as such in a subcode,
but because of a formally instituted correlation between sign and signifier (eg red light being
monosemically correlated with the signifier «stop») has been breached. There is no
transcendental operation or intentional positing in making sense of such phenomena or
reducing them to non-sense. The responses as social logic are inscribed and evoked
automatically in a subject’s comportment towards the signs, they are part of «common-
sense». However, continuing with the mild prohibition example, which is of direct relevance to
a brand’s differential positioning and equity, such a correlation (between candy and status)
exists as a combinatorial possibility within the code of status, should one wish to approach
this market phenomenon through this subcode (let us recall that coding is an operation that is
largely dependent on the coder, there is no metaphysics of codes). A premium quality candy
may be produced, in premium packaging with premium pricing, distributed in premium
delicatessen outlets. The rate of adoption, repurchase rates and quantified loyalty potential
may be gauged among subjects who buy into the respective code. Upon launch with the
requisite marketing mix such a premium candy may in fact acquire high equity, or be
recognized as of added value or of surplus meaning within its niche. What this example is
intended to demonstrate is that equity is (i) isotopic in a cultural narrative to added value as
the excess of the code instituted in an act of a semiotic exchange (ii) isotopic in a cultural
narrative to surplus of meaning as overcoded semiotic act (that is as an act that
synecdochically points to the limit of a code) What is lacking interpretively is the
establishment of how such a semiotic act is effected on behalf of a subject in the face of a
relatively undercoded incidence of a code. The answer lies in the leveraging of existing sign
types and their respective structural components of other products that partake of the same
code. The enchantment of the code assumes functional value not because it is put at play in
some sort of metaphysical necessitas, but because of the sussessful re-cognition of the new
brand as a token of a general economy of the code, including types of products with similar
structural components. Thus, the depth grammar of the code is evoked through the surface
structure of the signs, as a recursivity of the same signifiers inscribed in different product
categories. And at the same time, the signifying social logic of a code is enriched by the
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production of new brands or brand extensions, which points to the dialectical relationship
between code enrichment and the production of signs.
How brand meaning assumes value in the context of a semiotics of brand equity
perspective
Signs assume value as functives in a function that relates a plane of content with a plane of
expression. The plane of content includes the chain of signifiers to which the sign is attached
(having already established why the plane of the signified is reducible to the plane of the
signifier in a political economy of brands), while the plane of expression includes its manifest
attributes (logo, aesthetic elements, music, gestural elements in a commercial etc). Returning
to the initial conceptualization of brands, as signs ordered both horizontally/synchronically,
based on their syntagmatic similarity with other brands and their substitutability as signs
exchanged for abstract signifiers based on their signifying function on the vertical/diachronic
paradigmatic axis, we may equate the content of the sign function with the paradigmatic axis.
Given that the code includes both the syntactic aspect of signs’ ordering and the paradigmatic
aspect as set of «notions» or signifiers (or semes falling under a brand name as sememe),
both paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes are ways of translating aspects of the code.
Now, in order for a super-sign as a configuration functioning on both paradigmatic and
syntagmatic axes to assume differentially superior meaning, hence equity, to the competition,
it must establish itself in a system of differences or differential values alongside all three
prototypical categories, that is as a utilitarian, as a commercial, as a sociocultural sign. What
will determine the value of these functions is the degree to which they are successfully
exchanged for a set of signifiers or a set of brand image scorings. As already discussed in the
context of Baudrillard’s political economy of the sign, the value of a product does not depend
on its difference from other products as objects, but as already coded signs, based on the
social logic prescribed by a code and moreover on the way these signs are related or
configured. Therefore, value and by implication brand equity are dependent on the
diachronic/paradigmatic axis. Also, we have already established that such a value judgment
may be made by pointing to the limit of the code, which is by definition limitless, based on the
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principle of infinite semiosis, but which may be pinned down temporarily from a notional point
of view in a set of signifiers, otherwise it would not be of any operational value, which it is, as
a condition for the production of signs.
All of the above attain to clarify how brands assume meaning and differential value in a
semiotics of brand equity perspective underpinned by a theory of code(s) and constitute valid
descriptive propositions. But what are the implications from a brand managerial point of view
or how does the assertion that the establishment of equivalences between the syntagmatic
and the paradigmatic axes give rise to differential brand meaning and value?
Brand managerial implications of the semiotics of brand equity
As a provisional answer to the above question this paper will conclude by addressing the
applicability of the approach of a semiotics of brand equity, by laying bare how the aspects of
the theory of code(s) may aid in the generation of brand equity, which spans aspects of the
invention of a code or a sign, and the sustainability of brand equity, which spans aspects of
the selection of signs or codes.
For the sake of clarity the argumentation will draw on what I call the The Generative Matrix of
Equity Potential, displayed in Diagram 1.
Diagram 1 - The Generative Matrix of Equity Potential
Discontinuously newExtension of existing sign
function Established
Undercodedness
Extracodedness
OvercodednessLeve
l of c
oded
ness
Level of novelty of sign-function
Based on this generative matrix every brand semiotic possibility may be mapped out based
on configurations of a brand’s (i) level of codedness (ii) level of novelty as sign-function.
Codedness is split into the already explicated three levels of over, under and extra
codedness, while novelty level consists of a brand’s as sign function heritage in its respective
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product category (which implies either the extension of an existing established brand name,
but as a different sign-function to the mother brand or as an existing brand, which is not
established as sign-function).
In order to render these configurations as differential aspects of equity potential more
concrete let us address each one in turn:
(i) Discontinuously new sign function at the level of undercodedness
No familiarity with the brand-name and its expression plane; regarding the content plane, no
familiarity with its function as a utilitarian sign, and limited familiarity with its function as a
sociocultural sign, hence great uncertainty regarding its function as a commercial sign and at
first sight of limited equity potential, as hurdles must be overcome on all code-related fronts,
viz as syntax, as notions, as potential behavioral responses. Point of entry: Leverage
sociocultural aspects of dissimilar brands by drawing on latent analogies and semantic
contiguities that may be discerned by combining subcodes through the operation of the Ur-
code
(ii) Extension of existing sign function at the level of undercodedness
Not leading brand in terms of familiarity, but not wholly new either or an extension of a leading
or a non-leading brand in its category; limited potential as a commercial sign and need for
leveraging different combinatorial possibilities as a utilitarian and sociocultural sign. Medium
equity potential.
(iii) Established sign function at the level of undercodedness
This configuration may be portrayed as a case of diversification, that is extension of a well
familiar brand in a given category in another category where either no combinatorial rule
exists in terms of an inter-category fit and where substitutability of signifiers in a paradigmatic
fashion is initially of limited potential. In this case it is very important to capitalize on potential
similarities in terms of surface structure similarities at the syntagmatic level either by
addressing structural components of brands as utilitarian or sociocultural signs or both. Let us
recall that undercodedness (just like every level of codedness) does not concern necessarily
all aspects of the code.
(iv) Discontinuously new sign function at the level of extracodedness
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No familiarity with the brand-name and its expression plane; regarding the content plane, no
familiarity with its function as a utilitarian sign, and no familiarity with its function as a
sociocultural sign. This constitutes an imaginary limit case of configurative possibilities, an ex
nihilo creatio, which lies beyond the limits of semiotics. As Eco stresses, there is no ex nihilo
or ex novo creation.
(v) Extension of existing sign function at the level of extracodedness
Neither leading brand in terms of familiarity, nor wholly new , or an extension of a leading or a
non-leading brand in its category; limited potential as a commercial sign and need for
leveraging different combinatorial possibilities as a utilitarian or sociocultural sign. Medium
equity potential.
(vi) Established sign function at the level of extracodedness
This may be a case of either brand extension or diversification, but the combinatorial logic
driving them must be wholly new, hence augmented effort for justification of the brand
proposition.
(vii) Discontinuously new sign function at the level of overcodedness
No familiarity with the sign-function, but high equity potential due to the strictly closed
meaning of the code in which it aspires to be embedded. The decision lies more with the
selection of brand elements as semes at the content level and their credible, unique,
appealing transformation into the level of expression.
(viii) Extension of existing sign function at the level of overcodedness
Not leading brand in terms of familiarity, but not wholly new either or an extension of a leading
or a non-leading brand in its category; ample potential as a commercial sign and need for
leveraging different combinatorial possibilities as a utilitarian and sociocultural sign. High
equity potential.
(ix) Established sign function at the level of overcodedness
These brands constitute usually not only established brand players, but with high equity. They
stand synecdochically for codes and occasionally constitute codes themselves.
The principal aim of the mapping of the above configurations rests with providing an
exhaustive set of interactions among brands as super-signs that may be defined based on the
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three prototypical categories provided by Nöth and their level of novelty (in terms of their
familiarity and resonance with distinctive addressees or target groups) and of the level of
codedness that accompanies each configurative possibility with view to the potential of
generating and sustaining brand meaning and brand equity.
Insofar as branding is a dynamic process and brands are dynamic objects, the achievement
of high brand equity (as obtained in a historical snapshot of metrics) in itself is no guarantee
of a brand’s sustainability. From a managerial point of view, sustainability of brand equity may
be achieved by constantly scrutinizing the potential opened up through the various
configurations of the above illustrated Generative Matrix of Equity Potential.
The optimal way to approach the potential for equity generation is to address how codes
emerge in the first place. Eco addresses the issue of emergence not in the context of codes,
but in the context of individual signs (even though at its most radical , that is invention, the
process is equivalent to the emergence of codes), but the method reflects the mode of a
code’s enrichment, as already exposed in the context of the potentiality of inscribing a set of
gestural signs as dancing as part of the subcode of a family table.
The initial stage of the selection of signs as sources of brand equity (and by implication as
brand communications stimuli, which constitutes a further research area) is the most critical
one. Unless a clear understanding of the systemic function and the operational value of code
(simpliciter) and subcodes has been established first, the possibility of making a meaningful
selection of signs as sources of brand equity and by implication their ability to constitute
meaningful gestalts in the exchange of brands qua super-signs in different contexts and
circumstances would be an impossible task. This impossibility is a genetic, so to speak,
determinant of the very nature of the sign as member of a system of differences and
oppositions. The mode of selection of a sign does not stem from some sort of univocal and
linear relationship to a signifier , but in the context of a semiotic judgment, which amounts to
an existentialist judgment, viz the endorsement of a course of action [or a semiotic act] among
a theoretically infinite number of possibilities. It is by virtue of excluding other signs in a
system of differences and oppositions that a sign is selected, which act by itself does not lead
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to the closure of the selected sign’s or sign system’s meaning as intentional projection on
behalf of a brand owner of a set of semantic markers onto semiotic space, but rests with the
addressee.
Each time I confer a semiotic judgment I predicate a seme of a sememe, or I add a signifier to
the potential value set of a sign, as added content or another sign as an enrichment of its
plane of expression. In essence, its predication consists of an added value. However, this
addition takes place at the level of the addresser or the brand owner and as already illustrated
this initial action does not assume meaning unless inscribed in an act of exchange or a
semiotic act during which the sign assumes value (value emerges only in acts of exchange). It
is at the very juncture of this act that a sign becomes an interpretant (in Peirce’s terms) for a
consumer or a consumer segment, and assumes meaning. In the act of exchange the sign is
transformed into an interpretant or a brand related association. In terms of the modalities for
effecting these transformations Eco (1976:75) suggests three routes, viz (i) by pure phonic
analogy (ii) by homology or cultural classification (iii) by the ability to combine various
morphemes with the same lexeme.
From a decoding perspective there are various quantitative and qualitative methods for
describing (eg associative networks) and quantifying (eg through measuring the links from
node to node and from node to links in a network) associations, but these methods do not
address the modalities whereby transformations from signs to associations are effected in the
first place, save for stating descriptively the fact that such associations emerge. Eco’s
remarks on how signs give rise to associations are pathbreaking, but they require elaboration
prior to becoming operationally useful. In an attempt to elaborate on these remarks the
following should be taken into account by each class of transformative modality:
(i) Pure phonic analogy
(ii) Homology or cultural classification
(iii) The ability to combine various lexemes with the same morpheme
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From a semiotic point of view (i) and (iii) are of limited potential, as they concern purely
linguistic aspects, which do form part of a nexus of analogies and abilities, but are not
reducible to phonic analogies and morphematic abilities from a semiotic perspective (and
Hjelmslev himself has argued extensively against a linguistic reductionism to phonological
elements). It is (ii) that opens up the encoding horizon, while delivering it from the strictly
speaking isomorphic dimensions of (i) and (iii) to isotopic possibilities, by rendering a brand
qua super-sign capable of occupying through the functions of homology and isotopy the same
semantic markers in a semiotic space through the employment of different lexemes and
sememes or, simply put, to connote the same signifiers through the alternating employment of
different signs, sign systems and classes of signs. How is this homology established? By
leveraging given subcodes, inventing new ones or transforming existing ones. To this process
another crucial dimension should be added, that of discursive genre, which concerns more
the stylistic and syntagmatic aspect of a sub code as cultural classification, rather than the
signifier that is connoted isotopically through the variable investment of a super-sign with
other sign-vehicles (its enrichment). And homology as constitutive of a sign’s assuming
meaning through its inscription in various subcodes concerns the transformative aspect of a
sign by leveraging an existing or various subcodes. It does not explain or render interpretively
clear how a brand ultimately crystallizes as code. The latter may be interpreted by reversing
the process whereby signs assume meaning by leveraging subcodes, which furnishes the
proposition that codes assume meaning by leveraging signs. The more central the function
(either on a content or expression plane) of a sign in the operation of a code within a cultural
system the more the sign becomes synecdochically homologous to the code and in more
codes it attains to function centrally the more it assumes the value of an Ur-code (to use
Eco’s term from La structure absente). The modality is still the same, homology, but the
centrality of the brand qua super-sign in a semiotic tree (that would comprise both supersigns
and subcodes) changes from hypotactic to hypertactic. Insofar as such an interpretation
addresses the definitional aspect of a subcode as syntax and as combinatorial component,
but leaves unaddressed the aspect of combinatorial rule we may extend the function of
homology from semantic component in an order of objects to its rule-like function delineating
the combinatorial possibilities surrounding it. As an example, a McDonald’s burger, as a
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subcode itself, is a rule delineating the combinatorial possibilities with other signs (fries, salad,
drink), insofar as due to its centrality it determines what other products may be stringed with it
in its combinatorial scope, whereas a bottle of wine is determined by the main course, as a
non-central combinatorial component in the course’s combinatorial scope. These constant
interpretive transformations or recontextualizations constitute what Eco describes as a
phenomenology of modes of sign production.
Having thus far described the mutually presupposing nature of brands qua super-signs and
subcodes as the condition of their meaningful inscription with signifiers and Code as a generic
Ars Combinatoria among sub codes, let us briefly dwell on the marginal case of radical sign
invention, which corresponds to the configurative possibility (iv) in the Generative Matrix of
Brand Equity Potential (Graph 1). This case, which was described as per definitionem
impossible, points to the limit of the code, which has already been postulated as its own
limitless limit of production and may be linked to absolute exteriority, beyond the upper
semiotic threshold as a reduction ad absurdum pointing to the limits of the code.
Conclusion
The aim of this paper was to lay the conceptual foundations for a semiotics of brand equity. In
the course of the argumentation an attempt was made to demonstrate the interdependency of
the financial value of a brand on three prototypical value territories, which account for brand
meaning, thus constituting the semiotic value of brand that is reflected in accounting terms in
the difference between book and market value. The generation and sustenance of brand
equity as meaning surplus and surplus of exchange value embedded in complementary
meaning dimensions is dependent on semiotic codes and the latter are enriched by the
constant production and stretching of brands. The Generative Matrix of Brand Equity potential
was introduced as a portrayal of the multiple interdependencies between aspects and levels
of codedness and the relative novelty of a brand as sign, while pointing to the various stages
of building brand equity up to the point of a brand’s instituting itself as a code.
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