Semiotic Buddha: Quest for Enlightenment

Semiotics is an emerging buzz-word in the marketing research circles in India. I am fascinated by this mysterious colourful box (not a black box) of semiotics. While attending a semiotics workshop at IIML, Noida last week I was delighted to see that Indian researchers are open to embracing the semiotic mind-set. It was also heartening to see that Indian brand managers are also seeking semiotics as a strategic input in brand-building. However, not many of seem to have a clear idea about this discipline. Chris Arning beautifully compared semiotics with meditation. We all know that meditation (semiotics) is useful and fascinating, some of us practice it, but none of us fully understand how it works. This metaphor made me realize that I am a mere disciple on an eternal quest for semiotic enlightenment, with a goal to become a Semiotic Buddha – the one who understands the ultimate Semiotics. ;)

My first rendezvous with semiotics was during my master’s program in communications at MICA. The course at MICA was my first step towards understanding semiotics. The workshop this week was the second step. Now, my goal is 998 steps away. Being a first year PhD student, I feel that this is the best time for me to start walking on this path of academic exploration. In a series of blog posts on semiotics, I would be periodically sharing a beginner’s perspective on what I read over the next couple of years. I hope that this endeavour would help other beginners like me on their journey as well.

I begin this blog series by sharing my understanding of how semiotics differs from traditional qualitative research. These thoughts are based on the discussions we had at the workshop, supplemented by some preliminary reading on cognitive psychology.

How is Semiotics different from traditional Qualitative Research?

The subject matter of semiotics is ‘interpretation of meaning’ – to decipher how consumers create meaning in their minds when they witness any stimulus. Any individual, who uses his mind to interpret something, would be using certain habitual or routinized modes of thinking. These habitual modes of thinking are created through a learning process (conditioning) that the individual goes through in his entire life. There are many things in his environment that influence the way his mind is wired to think (develop schemas/ semantic networks in his mind).

Semiotics looks at the elements from the individual’s cultural environment deemed to have shaped the semantic structure of his mind. For example, being an Indian, I would have grown up watching a certain kind of movies and TV shows and I must be absorbing cultural content that is currently being shared around me. All these cultural ‘texts’ would be depicting the idea of ‘success’ in a certain way. These depictions or codes of success would have subconsciously entered into my mind and would have modified the wiring of my schema of ‘success’.

Suppose a researcher needs to understand the schema of success – what does ‘success’ mean to the consumer? A traditional qualitative researcher would conduct a focus group discussion or an in-depth interview with the consumer and elicit his verbal responses to the idea of success. Although this method has the potential to give rich content, the hard truth is that consumers would not be aware of their own subconscious schemas and it would be difficult for them to articulate the same. Furthermore, deliberative elicitation would lead to rationalization of thoughts and we would not be able to uncover the raw subconscious structure. Chris Arning used another beautiful metaphor of the surface of the ocean vs. the wave current underneath the surface. Traditional qualitative research would capture whatever appears on the surface, but may not be able to dive into the depths sufficiently.

But if the consumer is not able to tell me what is in his mind, who will?

We do not have a machine that can let a researcher travel into the subconscious mind of the consumer and to take photographs of the semantic networks in his mind ;). But semiotics shows us the way forward. The basic premise of cultural semiotics is that individuals consume cultural content and absorb the semiotic flow of these texts into their memory. These individuals then mimic the semantic structure reflected in these cultural texts. Hence, if we analyse the cultural content that surrounds the individual and decode the semantic structures within these texts, we can construct a replica of the semantic structure that exists within the consumer’s mind. This is the reverse engineering technique followed by a semiotician.

Traditional qualitative research is inside-out, whereas semiotics is outside-in. Hence, semiotics does not involve interviewing of consumers. The population/ sample to be studied consist of cultural texts like ads, movies, music, materials, packaging, blogs, etc. The sampling of content follows the general sampling principles of traditional research – aiming for a balance of parsimony and representativeness. These texts are deconstructed and analysed using semiotic analysis tools and theories. Semiotics uses a rich bag of techniques and theories for analysis. The colourful, enigmatic box of semiotic theories and techniques is what remains to be explored. I would be exploring these theories and techniques one by one and would share my thoughts on them in my future blog posts. I invite critical feedback on my posts from researchers (practitioners and academic) and students. Let’s all discuss, debate and learn together :)

Critically Yours

As researchers, and more so as human beings, each one of us has a tendency to be critical about many things we perceive around us. It is a vital skill to possess. Without the ability to critically 'read' the content shared by the outside world, mankind would not have been able to develop and evolve culturally.

What does it mean to be critical? Is it only about finding faults and bashing the creator of any content? No. Being critical means being wakeful while reading (or watching, hearing) any content. One should not blindly accept any content at face-value without analyzing and convincing oneself about its credibility. Being critical also means being mindful and conscious of our own thoughts - the content being created inside our own mind.

When we look at any content in the form of a text, a film, an ad, a speech or any form of communication or behavior, our mind starts the critiquing process. However, most of us use our personal biases and jump to conclusions. One needs to take into consideration all the authors of the content that is being critiqued - who created the content, shared the content, distorted the content, interpreted the content.

The interpreter (the viewer) is as much the co-author of the content as the creator because the viewer tends to project his self image on the content and create personal meaning. The 'culture' or the history of the larger social group that the viewer and the creator are a part of also plays a role in the creation of meaning because it shapes shared reference points of interpretation.

Although each one of us have our own idiosyncratic method of critiquing the content we consume, I would like to give a glimpse of the typology of Literary Critics from the domain of Consumer Culture Theory propounded by Barbara Stern (1989):

1. New Critics – focus on ‘what is said’ than ‘what it means’
2. Archetypal Critics – organize textual elements into packages of collective psychological, cultural thought patterns (archetypes)
3. Psychoanalytical Critics – analyze the psychological relationship between the reader and the text – how the reader creates personal meaning
4. Structural Critics – uncover multiple possible meanings of a text from a semiotic perspective
5. Deconstructionist Critics – understand meanings from binary opposites – defining based on what something is not.
6. Socio-cultural critics – explore foundations of ideologies like classism, racism, sexism, etc. that shape literature.

The above modes of literary criticism provide huge scope for analyzing the content from multiple vantage points. An uninformed critic may use any personalized technique that is skewed towards only one of the above techniques. Not only researchers, but the awareness of these methods would help people from all walks of life to become mindful critics.

Reference:

Stern, Barbara B. (1989), “Literary Criticism and Consumer Research: Overview and Illustrative Analysis,” Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (December), 322–34.

Culture and Consumer Behaviour

Culture is the mental programming of people in a particular context. It consists of implicitly shared meanings among a group of people. McCracken (1986) defines two elements of culture as (a) Cultural categories: which are fundamental axes or lenses of meaning through which the individual divides and views the world. These categories can include distinctions of race, class, gender, etc; and (b) Cultural principles: which are the values and ideas that form the basis of the above categorization. 

Hofstede, Neuijen, Ohayv, & Sanders (1990) developed a model to classify the levels of manifestation of culture. Figure 1 depicts the model.

Figure 1. Manifestation of Culture

Symbols are explicit words, gestures, pictures, objects that carry a specific meaning within a culture. Heroes are real or fictitious characters who personify prized characteristics in the culture. Rituals are activities conducted periodically which are socially essential within a culture. All these elements are explicit and can be observed in cultural practices. The deepest level of culture lies in values. Value can be defined as the answer to the question, “What is it that you want to live for? How do you want to live?” Hence, values are the end goals and preferred mode of action that people want to pursue.

McCracken (1986) also elucidates that cultural meanings are located in and transfer between three places namely, the culturally constituted world, the consumer good, and the individual consumer. Hence, in order to build cultural resonance, brands need to decode culture from the target society and encode culture in their brands through their products and advertisements.

Surf Excel: Redefining Cultural Principles

Cultural principles define cultural categories into valences and hierarchies. They decide what is good and what is bad. The detergent category conventionally follows the principle of ‘dirt is bad’, with all brands positioned on cleanliness and whiteness. Surf Excel redefined this cultural principle in order to break the clutter in the market and positioned itself on ‘dirt is good’.

Figure2. Surf Excel - Shifting Cultural Category by changing Cultural Principles

In Asia, dirt is culturally associated with negative aspects of poverty, poor hygiene, hardship, disease and sometimes death. In a case study written by Unilever and their advertising agency, Lowe (Gosling & Jathanna, 2012), they explain that they reversed the logic of making dirt ‘good’ from bad among moms by showing them the life values kids learn through dirt. Asian mothers cherish life values of  'forgiveness', 'sacrifice', 'gratitude', 'courage', 'determination' and want their child to inculcate these traditional values. Surf Excel, through its advertisements, showcased that, through dirt, a child can learn these values and have high gains. This helped Surf Excel become a symbol for freedom (Sachitanand, 2012). This campaign helped the brand's sales in Asia grow tenfold and become the No.1 brand in most Asian countries, with market share reaching as high as 70% (Gosling & Jathanna, 2012).

Fair & Lovely: Tapping the Values of Fairness

Fair & Lovely is the largest selling skin whitening cream in the world. It was launched by Unilever first in the Indian market. It held a leadership market share of 50-70% of the skin whitening market in India in 2006, with its close rivals Fairever and FairGlow only having a combined share of 16% (Karnani, 2007). Fair & Lovely was able to build resonance with Indian consumers because it decoded the culture of fairness at a deeper level of values and encoded the same in its brand communication.

Based on the cultural analysis done by Verma (2011), we can plot the manifestation of the Culture of Fairness of Hofstede’s model as follows:

Symbols	·         Hindi idioms 2 (‘kali kartutein’, ‘kala akshar..’ ‘Buri nazar wale..’ ‘kaali kaluti baigan looti’ ·         Moon related songs (lullaby and film songs) ‘chand see mehbooba ho..’ ·         Fairness eulogizing popular songs and folk songs
Heroes	·         Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Fair protagonist in movies
Rituals	·         Home treatments to protect fairness ·         Religious customs of worshipping ‘full moon’ (poornima, poonam) vs. amavasya, ·         Search for bride and bridegroom (matrimonial ads) Eg: "I am a 36-year-old man looking for an ideal Indian wife. She must be beautiful, fair skinned, well-mannered and respectful of my aging parents."
Values	·         Feminine beauty, perfection, racial superiority, confident, attractive ·         Better marital and job prospects, status

Fair & Lovely tapped into the deep values associated with fair skin and showcased the same in their advertisements. They initially positioned the fairness cream as an instrument to reach the end goal of better marital prospects. As the society changed towards increasing career consciousness among women, they moved to the end value of better job prospects and focused on the role of the product in helping the women realize their dream of becoming independent.

Clottaire Rapaille – Unlocking the Culture Code for Product Design

The deepest manifestation of culture lies in values. However, consumers may not be consciously aware of their own value systems that drive their behaviour and decisions. Most of the deepest held values are at sub-conscious level. Clottaire Rapaille is a psychologist who delves into the sub-conscious mind of consumers to uncover culture codes associated with product categories. In his book “The Culture Code” (Rapaille, 2006), he explains that the culture code can be decoded by analysing childhood imprints.

He presents an example of Wrangler Jeep, a player in the American SUV market. Jeep Wrangler was initially a big player, but later lost ground because of many new entrants in the SUV segment offering higher comfort and luxury. Chrysler, the manufacturer, was contemplating to redesign the Wrangler Jeep to make it more comfortable and luxurious. However, Rapaille’s research probed on the childhood imprints of “Jeep” among American consumers and found stories about free riding in open planes and symbols of the American West. He concluded that the Code for Jeep in America is HORSE. He recommended to design the product to symbolize a horse. A horse is not associated with comfort or luxury. It is associated with toughness and ruggedness. Hence, Jeep was designed with removal doors and an open top – to give the feeling of wind while riding, similar to riding a horse. They included tough leather like a saddle for the seats and made the headlights round in shape because horses have round eyes and not square ones.

The company also used a horse in its advertising and presented the Wrangler as a noble, nomadic hero that arrived serendipitously in perilous situations, resolved them thanklessly, and rode off quietly into the sunset. With the new product design, the sales of Jeep grew substantially along with establishment of Jeep fan clubs in America. These fan clubs also had t-shirts with the slogan “Real Jeeps have round headlights.” Recently, I-Phone cases with the Jeep theme are also being sold (See image). The brand has become a symbol for wildness and ruggedness and has strong resonance among its consumers.

Figure 4. I-phone case with Jeep theme

Figure 5. Recent T-shirt themes on Jeep

References:

Gosling, B., & Jathanna, R. (2012). OMO/Surf Excel/Rinso/Breeze: Dirt is good - The value of dirt. Warc Prize for Asian Strategy.

Hofstede, G., Neuijen, B., Ohayv, D. D., & Sanders, G. (1990). Measuring Organizational Cultures: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study Across Twenty Cases. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(2), 286. doi:10.2307/2393392

Karnani, A. G. (2007). Doing Well By Doing Good - Case Study: “Fair & Lovely” Whitening Cream (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. ID 958087). Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=958087

McCracken, G. (1986). Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods. Journal of Consumer Research, 13(1), 71–84.

Rapaille, C. (2006). The culture code : an ingenious way to understand why people around the world buy and live as they do / Clotaire Rapaille. New York : Broadway Books, c2006.

Sachitanand, R. (2012, August 8). How HUL succeeded in breaking through the clutter with “Surf Excel” campaign. The Economic Times.

Verma, H. V. (2011). Skin “Fairness”—Culturally Embedded Meaning and Branding Implications. Global Business Review, 12(2), 193–211. doi:10.1177/097215091101200202

Creating Meaningful Impact in Academia

As an academic researcher, one needs to develop a new theory which is "path breaking". One needs to do disruptive research  in a positively constructive manner.

How can one's contribution be seen to be 'meaningful'?

I was reading a semiotics paper and discovered a beautiful analogy used by Saussure in describing the relationships between words and their meaning.

Saussure talks about a "Chess" metaphor. In a game of chess, moving one piece on the board alters the relationship between all the other pieces on the board.

This metaphor can beautifully be applied to the role of meaningful research in any domain of knowledge. Our theory should be like a new move on the chess board of existing knowledge.  Our move should influence the interrelationships between all other pieces of knowledge in the domain. This influence can be brought by challenging the underlying assumptions in the body of knowledge because the assumptions form the common thread that connects all the pieces together.

Kabir laments the pitfalls of 'Language'

If we ask ourselves one question, "What is language?", we would get a simple answer that language is a set of symbols that we use to communicate with each other. It may be either verbal or non-verbal. Since ages we have created signs and symbols and have assigned 'shared' meanings to each of them. Many of these signs seem to continue to depict the same meaning through out. But some other signs mean different things at different times.

The purpose of communication is to communicate a message clearly to the receiver. But when the signs we create start becoming contradictory to their own meaning, the whole concept of language starts looking funny.

Kabir, the great Indian saint and poet, laments about the vagaries of language:

Chalti ka naam gaadi

Maal ko kehtey hain khoya

Rangeen ka naam narangi

Dekh Kabira roya

[What moves is called interred/ vehicle

Commodity is called lost/ desiccated milk

What is colorful is called colourless/ orange

On observing these, weeps Kabir!]

Source: The Tenth Rasa by Michael Heyman

Whoever had assigned the meaning of the colour "orange" to the word "naarangi", must have had some mischief in her mind. These words can mean completely opposite things at the same time. This makes us think and rethink the level of importance we give to words in our daily lives. Are words mere carriers of literal meaning or they carry a lot of other hidden motives? Do words actually add meaning to our lives, or are they mere illusions? The language needs to be created with responsibility to make it more understandable. Otherwise, it will fill the society with contradictions and myths. But who takes the responsibility of shaping language in first place?

A Consumer is a Temporary State of Being

How do you define a Consumer? Is she a person who buys your products? Who consumes your products?

The person whom we consider to be our consumer, also does one million and one other things throughout the day. She is not our consumer 24/7. If we look at the person from the inside, we can clearly see that this person is not the same person in different contexts. She adorns different avatars when surrounded by different discourses. These avatars, or "Moments of Identity" as Virginia Valentine from Semiotics coins it, are contextual and volatile in nature. They are temporary states of being. Similarly, only when the person is in the context of our brand, and she consciously immerses herself in the context, does she adorn the avatar of our consumer.

So, the lessons brands can learn from this perspective of looking at consumers is to make the brand discourse culturally immersive for the person to transform into a consumer. It is more important for the person to see herself as our consumer instead of we falsely assuming her to be one.

Inspired from 21st Century Consumer by Wendy Gordon & Virginia Valentine

ShweePea - A new brand I cooked up

We had a course on 'Visual Literacy' recently at MICA where we worked on an interesting assignment of creating a new brand for any product or service category. So, we thought of launching a new chain of playschools across the country and name it "ShweePea".

The underlying idea that guides our brand purpose emerges from Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk below:

Each kid has tremendous talent. Kids are not frightened to make mistakes; they are ready to try everything. But the world teaches them to be scared to make mistakes. Creativity, which is the process of having original ideas of some value, comes from seeing things differently and that’s what ShweePea would help kids do.

Based on the Montessori school of thought, we nurture innocent naughtiness in your child and ensure that he doesn’t lose the capacity to think creatively. The brand elements are colorful and safe with smooth rounded edges. We have made all elements including the fonts, shapes and colors reflect innocent naughtiness. :)

Life in 4000 A.D.

Future world painting by Fred Freeman (1906-1988)

Hi! I’m Tanvi Gupta, a student of Level X of the “Edu-Circuit” school located on the Earth. Today, I’m going to tell you about my day…

I woke up at 7:50 A.M S.E.T. (Standard Earth Time) when the biological alarm clock connected to my brain set off and automatically secreted anti-soporific agents in my body. After getting up, I walked into my new “Clean-o-matic” machine that helped me get ready for school. The new machine has all the settings customized for me- the electronic toothbrush, my tooth paste flavor, temperature of water, my favorite soap, automatic hair-dresser and also my school uniform (completely ironed).

I got ready by 7:52 A.M. S.E.T and had my favorite breakfast, a couple of “sandwich pills” that provide me instant satisfaction & nutrition of 2 sandwiches in a single gulp! I stuck my “nano-book” behind my ears and was ready for school. My grandmother tells me that when her mother used to go to school, they actually used to take huge books that were double the size of our palm! Oh my God! Its so hard to believe that! Our ancestors were really very primitive…..

Anyways, at sharp 7:54 A.M. S.E.T. I entered the “teleporter” that instantly transmitted me to school. As I entered the lobby, the electronic records automatically got updated with my attendance for the day. Our school is one of the most famous schools in the “Milky-Andro” Galaxy belt. That’s the reason we have many alien students enrolling every year. I reached my classroom at 7:55 A.M. and saw that the class was already full. The first row was occupied by the “Zilchos” from planet “Zilch”, the invisible planet from our neighbouring galaxy Andromeda. They look similar to humans but with the absence of a nose. They use their palms to smell. So they make sure that their hands are kept clean always!

The second row was occupied by the “Ezhiopians” from “Ezhiopia” which is the seventy eighth moon of planet “Zoogoooo”. They are very different because they consume food through their skin which is porous. So, you better be careful the next time you shake hands with or hug an ezhiopian! But jokes apart, they are very friendly and helpful by nature. The last three rows were occupied by earthlings, moonlings and marsians. Actually, all of us from the Solar system are quite united in the class. In our history lessons we learnt that many years ago there was a geo-bio-racial discrimination between people from earth and mars due to the red colouration of martians. But now, we have crossed all inter-planetary racial barriers. But we still need to overcome the inter-galaxial boundaries…

We had our Cosmography class at 8:00 A.M. S.E.T. Our class teacher “Tutor #2435” was the latest model of the techno-tutor series of robots with the highest level of artificial intelligence and advanced cognitive abilities. She* entered the class from under the desk and greeted us all. Then she started giving us the codes of the various sources of information about the various planets which were fed into our nano books. The nano books are equipped with the latest technology and all the information automatically gets neurotransmitted into our brains! But this process is done at a steady pace to ensure permanent settlement in the grey cells. I have heard another shocking fact from my granny that our ancestors used to write in books using an instrument called pen that had a coloured fluid inside. How is it possible when there are zero-gravity classrooms? The fluid ink will not be able to flow down at all!

*( the Intergalaxial Institute of Gender Balancing – IIGB, has passed a legislation that the robots have to be addressed with a female pronoun because of the fall in the percentage of female organisms in the galaxy)

Anyways, the classes continued as usual. I had a couple of meal pills for lunch. Post-lunch, I felt quite heavy. I guess I had a pill too much. I had a hydro-pill to quench my thirst. The hydro pill is equivalent to water of the ancient days. As you know, earth is the only planet that had water content. But everything dried up centuries ago. The hydro pill is synthetic compact water generated in the laboratory. We have learnt to adapt without real water through evolution over the past few centuries!

The last class for the day was Language, at 3:00 P.M S.E.T. We all had selected the language of our choice. I had selected “Ezhiopian” language because I find it very interesting to learn inter-galaxial languages. And it would also be useful for my future because I’m planning to move to Ezhiopia for my further studies. They do not use the mouth or vocal chords to communicate. Instead, this language uses claps, snaps and sneezes! Its an amazing adventure to learn such languages!

School was done for the day at 4:00 P.M. S.E.T. I teleported home by 4:05 P.M. Now, it was time to visit my favourite place on earth – The Forestarium! It is the most beautiful scene that I have ever seen. It is a pre-historic piece of land that has been conserved and showcased. It contains a bunch of around 25 huge green and brown pole-like structures called “Trees”! These vegetative organisms have become extinct centuries ago! But we are lucky enough to be able to witness atleast a bunch of these today.

My mom also gave me a pleasant news that our cousins are coming to visit us from the Moon. I love my cousins a lot. We all have grown up together. But last year, they had to shift to the moon because the population on the Mesosphere of the earth has also surpassed the limit. Last century, the population on the earth’s crust, troposphere and stratosphere had reached its peak. Each layer of the Earth’s atmosphere is being utilized one by one to build zero-gravity apartments every year! The Moon is also almost full! ;)

Today was an eventful day…

Anyways, its bed-time for me now…

I need to switch off my brain and keep it for charging. Need to use it tomorrow in class!

Good night (in case you have a period called “night” in your planet)

Visual Thinking - the best way to learn

Visual Thinking is something that has always purveyed strength to my concentration levels. From among the 5 senses, the sense of vision is the most important one for me. Since childhood, I have always been attracted to visual content that textual or audio. Even if one reads through a text, the mind creates various kinds of images with circles and arrows, dynamic transactions between people, objects, shapes, colors, etc... The simple black and white text on paper turns into a beautiful, colorful collage of characters in our mind.

The canvas for this amazing piece of art resides in our right brain. The right brain is known to be the link to experience "Nirvana". It does not confine your consciousness to the "real" world. It creates or enters into a new world that has no boundaries, no definitions. A person who is comfortable using her right brain more often, turns out to be among the creative lot!

But visual thinking generally comes naturally to us. If I tell you that I have a friend called "Bob", you may instantly create a rough image of that person in your mind. Maybe that person has a round or oval head! This can be clearly explained using the famous "Bouba-Kiki" effect.
I have 2 creatures with me. One is named "Bouba" and the other is named "Kiki". I have the pictures of both of them (not necessarily in the same order). Can you tell me which one is Bouba and which one is Kiki?

Generally, a majority of people will name the spiky pointed creature as "Kiki" and the rounded blob-like creature as "Bouba". This is the power of visual thinking that is innate within us.

Visual thinking helps a student to grasp concepts faster and to retain them as well. The Effective Elaboration that takes place within a person's mind after learning is an outcome of visual thinking. If you hear the word "Circle", the image of a circle will come in your mind. The 'database' of our mind is a zillion times larger and faster than any of the fasted computers or search engines in the universe!

A large part of this database lies within our genes. This means that we are born with a lot of images in our mind. That explains the "Psychic Unity of Mankind".