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Using Semiotics in Marketing

How to Achieve Consumer Insight for Brand Growth and Profits

Improve your understanding of what semiotics is and how it can be used to drive growth and profits by using it to create better ads, marketing communications, branding, websites, packaging and social media content.

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EAN: 9781398607644

Edition: 2

Published: 03 Mar 2023

Format: 233 x 156

360 pages

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About the book

Semiotics is a superpower for marketers. It's a proven, powerful method of uncovering consumer insight, tailoring brand strategies that work and generating profit for brands.

Companies such as Unilever and P&G have attested to the success of Lawes semiotics in stimulating innovation and boosting sales. Now newly updated, this second edition is packed with even more revelations about brands, consumers and their emerging needs. Three new chapters reveal the unseen social forces that drive the Be Kind movement, public appetite for sincerity and the emotions of younger generations.

Using Semiotics in Marketing is an acclaimed how-to guide that makes semiotics accessible. It ensures all agency-side and client-side marketers can pick up the skills to use and apply semiotics to brands and is the only book on semiotics ever published that sets out a complete blueprint for research projects. This is your one-stop guide to learn how to write briefs and proposals, design projects, conduct analysis, write reports and present research findings.

Start using semiotics today. Position and launch new brands, rejuvenate established ones, design products and packaging and inspire timely and provocative ad campaigns. See the future. Innovate.

About the authors

Dr Rachel Lawes is recognized as one of the original founders of British commercial semiotics. Based in London, UK, she has convened the Market Research Society Advanced Qualitative Methods Masterclass for 15 years. Academic posts include Principal Lecturer in Marketing at Regent's University London. She supplies brand strategy and consumer insight to brands and ad agencies globally. Clients include Unilever, P&G, Diageo and Grey London. Rachel is a Fellow of the Market Research Society in the UK. She is the author of Using Semiotics in Marketing and Using Semiotics in Retail, both published by Kogan Page.

Rachel Lawes

- Chapter - 00: Introduction to the new edition;
- Chapter - 000: Introduction to the first edition;
- Chapter - 01: Semiotics will change your career in marketing or market research;
- Chapter - 02: An explosion of semiotics in business;
- Chapter - 03: How to do research using semiotics – A blueprint for marketers;
- Chapter - 04: Images, language and other semiotic signs;
- Chapter - 05: Society, culture and other big influences on consumers;
- Chapter - 06: Creativity and innovation – Semiotic tools for thinking;
- Chapter - 07: How to do semiotic field trips;
- Chapter - 08: Combining semiotics with ethnography and discourse analysis;
- Chapter - 09: Data – insight – strategy;
- Chapter - 10: Sharing the findings of semiotic research;
- Chapter - 11: Industry debates and the future of semiotics;
- Chapter - 12: Inspiration – How to continue teaching yourself to do semiotics;
- Chapter - 13: Consumer needs in the 2020s;
- Chapter - 14: Brands and businesses;
- Chapter - 15: Marketing and communications;
- Chapter - 16: Acknowledgements;
- Chapter - 17: Glossary;
- Chapter - 18: References;

Reviews

Kim Einan, Chief Strategy Officer, Starcom

Using Semiotics in Marketing is a must-read for anyone committed to putting people at the centre of marketing. Dr Lawes manages to make a complex and nuanced practice approachable, and does so in a way that illuminates, rather than dulls, the pixie dust of semiotics. This effortless balance of the practical and the magical solidified my belief that Dr Lawes is an underutilized resource in our industry.

Dr Panagiotis Kokkalis, Chair of Business and Management and Associate Professor of Strategy, Rochester Institute of Technology, Dubai

How many times in our lives have we looked at objects or ideas or brands for what they are rather than what they signify? A coffee, for example, as a brewed beverage, evokes comfort, creativity and alertness; a sofa, as a furniture item, evokes symmetry, relaxation and family time. In this compelling book about images, icons, language, culture, people and meaning, the often-mystifying world of semiotics comes alive. Lawes, in her commercially relevant and practical account, masterfully brings forth the future of researching customer engagement by describing how researchers, strategists and marketers can decode signs so they can see connections and meanings that others cannot. It beautifully and aptly explains the fascinating world of semiotics with clarity and accessible language for all, novices or experts. A must-read!

George Tannenbaum, Founder, GeorgeCo, LLC, Adaged Blog

Seeing things other brands, marketers or even the person sitting next to you don't is vital to success. In Using Semiotics in Marketing Dr Lawes gives you the keys to unlock the unseen that's all around us. With sharper vision we become sharper marketers. Dr Lawes' book helps you keep your 'eyes on that very special prize'.

Leslie X Hallam, Course Director, Psychology of Advertising MSc, University of Lancaster and Qualitative Consultant, Tangent Partnership

Are great semioticians born or created? Mindful, perhaps, of my own limitations in this field, I had always leaned toward the former, lamenting my lack of relevant genetic curlicues. The first edition of this book changed all of that, making the mysterious hinterland of semiotics accessible, sending up a flare to illuminate this terrain and roll back the shadows cast by past intellectuals - yes, I'm looking at you, Barthes. This new version, enriched with recent social history and dripping with new cultural codes, is clear, concise and comprehensible, touching the universal elements of the everyday while spotlighting the 'how to' of creative analysis - increasingly necessary to business innovation and delivering competitive advantage.

Dr Nick Coates, Global Creative Consulting Director, C Space

The field of semiotics is littered with books that are either unreadable, unusable or far too pleased with themselves. Lawes' is different. As well as being hugely practical and commercially relevant, this gem of a textbook is packed full of juicy cultural analysis. Lawes manages to make page-turners out of discussions on baked beans and toilet tissue. Her depiction of British tea-time rituals is up there with Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down. It could only have been written by someone who cares as much about Instagram as she does about Ideograms. Essential reading.

Ray Poynter, Founder and Chair, NewMR and Member of ESOMAR Council

Do you wish you knew more about semiotics, how it is used in market research, and how it links to other techniques? Learn how ideas get into people's heads, the role of culture and the method of outside-in thinking. A must-read for any marketer or market researcher.

Anthony Tasgal, Strategist and Owner, POV Marketing and Research

I like to think I know a bit about semiotics, but Lawes is the real deal, the Full Monty, the Queen of Codes. Her insightful work is an important rejoinder and reminder to all those in the brand and comms world of the need to focus on culture and meaning, linguistics and anthropology, icons and images - not just the reductionist world of messages, propositions and benefits.

Viv Farr, Managing Director, Narrative Health

A great read for anyone in the research game! Whether new to the field or long in the tooth, this is certainly a book to get stuck in to.

Fiona Blades, President and Chief Experience Officer, MESH Experience

From the moment I started reading about the culture of weddings, I was gripped. This was going to be a good read! But more than that, Using Semiotics in Marketing gives you the step-by-step, practical tools to learn and use the discipline yourself - written in a highly engaging manner.
Lawes masterfully combines the practicality of a training manual with a 'can't put down' read. If you are intrigued by semiotics, if you wish you knew how to be a semiologist, Lawes gives you the tools to get stuck in. This second edition really opened my eyes to the importance of Generation Z and provides heaps of practical strategies for brands and marcoms as new generations of consumers evolve.

Phyllis McFarlane, Market Research Society Gold Medallist

I have concluded that all Quant researchers become Qual converts in the end - and I am no exception. I've spent the last 10 years promoting qual research, and it seems to me that semiotics is a qual 'superpower'. I loved the clarity of this book and the clever synthesis of so much academic research that I wouldn't have had the time to read for myself, but most of all I appreciated gaining an insight into current trends that I have been observing without fully understanding. If you are a 'boomer' (like me), some of the ideas of metamodernism are bewildering and very hard to assimilate - but the effort is very definitely worthwhile for the light it shines on the modern world.

Alan Hathaway, MD, Discovery Research Ltd and Judge, MRS Awards 2022

Lawes excels at writing in a way that demystifies semiotics and makes it clearly actionable in an engaging way, exploring the cultural changes happening in society that only semiotics can truly identify. The new chapters include identifying the consumer needs of the 2020s and provide several different lenses that businesses can instantly learn from. A shout out here goes to the way that the case studies and activities dovetail seamlessly together, to provide the tools for marketeers to apply immediately.

Stephanie David, Vice President Research and Design, Vital Findings

An invaluable tool for any researcher looking to go beyond the traditional methodologies to successfully level up and differentiate their analysis and storytelling. Lawes has made semiotics accessible to those of us who aren't expertly trained as semioticians but still understand the value of decoding the cultural symbols and language all around us. Lawes' Using Semiotics in Marketing gets us results for our clients every time with its inspiring advice for market researchers. It's full of amazing revelations and stories you won't read anywhere else. This expanded second edition has even more fascinating insights concerning social change in the United States.

Julie Irwin, Co-Founder and Board Director, Citrine Market Research and Judge, MRS Awards 2022

In writing Using Semiotics in Marketing, Rachel Lawes has succeeded in both simplifying and making a complex subject accessible. This book is a great practical guide to semiotics written in an engaging style. I would highly recommend it to all insight professionals who want to further their understanding of the subject.

Steven Darby, Director, AURA

If you're looking for a well-written, easy-to-understand and informative book on the use of semiotics in marketing then look no further. Dr Lawes has taken years of experience and succinctly summarized it into a practical and interesting book. The second edition builds on the first by bringing an explanation of semiotics in relation to recent yet rapid changes to western-influenced culture. Dr Lawes continues to deliver further knowledge to the reader and practical responses that brands can make to meet the changing expectations of their market and consumers.

Sandra Grandsoult, Co-Founder and Equity Architect, Equitas Insight

If you read just one book about the shifting consumer culture and what it means for brands, make it this one! Dr Lawes sets out the criticality of semiotics in this powerful, practical and immensely insightful second edition. It brilliantly elevates semiotics from a 'nice to have' to a 'must have' for all insight and marketing practitioners. It bravely challenges old ways of thinking and catapults us into a state of readiness for the future. It's an essential, enlightening and hugely enjoyable read.

Hilary Woods, Strategic Partner, Crater Lake & Co and Agency for the Third Age

This is a weighty tome of information and thought-provoking content. What is most relevant and fruitful for me is the way Rachel Lawes helps marketers (in the broadest sense) understand that semiotics can make tangible what their customers are thinking and feeling in ways that are much more insightful than the kind of answers we tend to get in Q&A market research.

Using Semiotics in Marketing is a must-read for anyone committed to putting people at the centre of marketing. Dr Lawes manages to make a complex and nuanced practice approachable, and does so in a way that illuminates, rather than dulls, the pixie dust of semiotics. This effortless balance of the practical and the magical solidified my belief that Dr Lawes is an underutilized resource in our industry.
Kim Einan, Chief Strategy Officer, Starcom

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