{"title":"Legendary Brands and Economic Value: A Semiotic Approach","authors":"K. Bankov","doi":"10.5840/AJS201913142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/AJS201913142","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I compare and synthesize three separate discourses on marketing communication and propose a model for symbolic added value, a quality that characterizes the most memorable brands. Kevin Lane Keller (Strategic Brand Management, 2013) exhaustively outlines the pragmatic steps for building, managing and measuring strong brands, but his approach overlooks the basic distinction between ordinary product brands and Legendary Brands. Laurence Vincent’s book (Legendary Brands, 2002) is dedicated to precisely this distinction, and the author takes an interdisciplinary (but mainly anthropological) approach to proposing a model for a “brand mythology system”. Although the model can be used for pragmatic purposes, its main power is to explain the success of existing Legendary Brands. But while Vincent’s model treats many topics of semiotic interest, semiotic theory and methodology are presented only in a distorted fashion. Therefore, I propose that Jean-Marie Floch’s (Semiotics, Marketing and Communication, 2001) research on the types of valorization advertising confers upon brands can be used to fill critical gaps in the other two approaches and complete my own theory. By analyzing case studies of several successful Bulgarian brands in an autoethnographic mode, I will demonstrate that strategic brand management can be enriched through reference to semiotic and anthropologic models, provided they are translated into its vocabulary and discourse and that the resulting practical guidance can be applied to mid-sized, small, and very small companies, and not just to giant companies on the scale of Apple and Harley Davidson.","PeriodicalId":42572,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5840/AJS201913142","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71165878","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Possibilities of Materiality: Application of a Peircean Model of the Sign for Building New Brands","authors":"Maciej Biedziński","doi":"10.5840/AJS201922245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/AJS201922245","url":null,"abstract":"In contemporary marketing practice, semiotics is often considered to be a useful set of tools employed only in certain moments of the brand-building process. One of the reasons for this is that models rooted in dyadic understanding of a sign serve to narrow the role of applied semioticians to that of the expert, supporting a linear transfer of meaning from culture to products and services. This article proposes a framework that regards a semiotician, rather, as a key figure—a figure that I refer to as “the brand facilitator”—in the process of creating a new brand. The approach I present is based on the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce and his idea of the sign as a cooperation between three subjects—the object, the representamen and the interpretant—with the object, namely the Dynamical Object, being the starting point for a non-linear, rhizomatic process of brand-becoming or the creation of a new brand. The article offers a detailed explanation of steps needed to complete each of the three main stages of the inquiry, including a material research phase, a cultural research phase and a phase of expressive anchoring. The theoretical framework is supported by a case study, thoroughly describing a process of creating a brand of vegetable pastes introduced in 2017 on the Polish market.","PeriodicalId":42572,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2018-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5840/AJS201922245","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71165532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Cassirer as Revolutionary: Semiotics as Embodied Worldview: Appreciating the Other in Ourselves","authors":"E. Kramer","doi":"10.5840/AJS2017122731","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/AJS2017122731","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the meaning of interactive comportment as identified by Richard Lanigan and the role fundamental analysis of this facticity (communicology) can play in improving social life. The role of communicology as exposed by this non-naïve sense of responsibility is examined. The contribution of Ernst Cassirer’s work on symbology generally, and the primitive more specifically, is explored as a case that supports Lanigan’s assertion that fundamental examination of comportment can expand our understanding of ourselves and others, facilitate tolerance, foster creativity, and enrich our lives. Rigorous examination and appreciation of comportment, including the relationship between identity and difference, has implications for, and reverberates throughout, the lifeworld. A non-naïve understanding that social studies take place within a social environment and have consequences for that environment prompts us to self-consciously interrogate the implications of such work for life. Cassirer’s work demonstrates the potential for communicology to facilitate change.","PeriodicalId":42572,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-12-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44278947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Paulo Freire and Ernst Cassirer: Mythic and Superstitious Consciousness in Contemporary Academic Culture","authors":"Maureen D. Connolly","doi":"10.5840/AJS2017121830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/AJS2017121830","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42572,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-12-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46079624","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ernst Cassirer’s Theory and Application of Communicology: From Husserl via Bühler to Jakobson","authors":"Richard L. Lanigan","doi":"10.5840/AJS2017121428","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/AJS2017121428","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42572,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49086924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Beyond the “Tragedy of Culture”: In-between Epistemology and Communication","authors":"G. Sonesson","doi":"10.5840/AJS2017121227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/AJS2017121227","url":null,"abstract":"Spelling out the more or less implicit phenomenology found in Peirce’s categories and in the “Basisphanomene” suggested by the late Cassirer, this paper attempts to extend Cassirer’s own suggestion for the grounding of the human, or, as we prefer to say, semiotic, sciences, by means of an elucidation of the components of the basic situation of communication, revised on the basis of the Prague school approach to semiotics. In the first part of the paper, we consider Cassirer’s proposal for a theory of science, in the light of both the first scholarly discussion of the theme, involving Rickert, Windelbrand and Dilthey, and the second round, initiated by Gadamer and Habermas, while drawing final conclusions from the surreptitious results of the advent of Structuralism, in which Cassirer was a somewhat unheeding player. In the second part of the paper, the semiotic sciences are tentatively grounded in the sciences of normalcy, the epitome of which is Husserl’s science of the Lifeworld, presenting the different “Basisphanomene” as being the foundation for three fundamental epistemological operations, derived from the act of communication, which are all necessary to the deployment of the semiotic sciences. (Less)","PeriodicalId":42572,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42512341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Musical Performance As an Intermedial Affair (A Case of a Pianist)","authors":"D. Martinelli, Lina Navickaitė-Martinelli","doi":"10.5840/AJS201722123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/AJS201722123","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42572,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45384070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction—A Manifesto For “New Humanities”","authors":"D. Martinelli","doi":"10.5840/ajs2017331/21","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/ajs2017331/21","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42572,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SEMIOTICS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2017-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41430784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}