The Visual Turn: Corporate Identity as an Alternative Public Relations Tool

Abstract

This chapter aims to redefine corporate identity as a public relations (PR) tool, part of a new communication syntax of hypermodernity. In line with relevant theories of narrative engagement coming from the post-structuralist semiotics and the ‘aesthetics of interaction’, corporate identity is discussed as a conversational instrument, retrieved and reconstructed by ‘echo chambers’ and ‘curiosity gaps’. The territory of visual identity becomes part of a collective transaction, a sort of ‘open work’/‘opera aperta’, where consumers are asked to build their own ‘intentio lectoris’. In McLuhan’s terms, this can be translated as a ‘cooling down’ of the system of corporate identity. ‘Conversational branding’, rooted in the dialogic model of PR, provides an interactive usage of visual identity, and a new consumer-centric perspective in strategic communication.