This document discusses using semiotics and cultural context to develop meaningful brand identities and ensure consistent communication across channels. It makes the following key points: 1. Successful brands have a clear vision and identity represented by culturally relevant meanings that are consistently reinforced through all communications. 2. Brand meanings must be embedded in all messages and channels to provide a unified brand image conveying the key meanings. 3. Understanding brand meanings within their cultural and market contexts allows for consistent branding experiences and prevents image fragmentation across different channels over time.

1. SEMIOTICS IN BRAND COMMUNICATION
OR PUTTING THE BRAND MEANINGS
ON THE SPOT

2. What new to say about
the BRAND ...?

3. Each succesfull brand must have a clear vision,
a clear direction to go, a unique identity and a
distinct image. Brand images must be easily
readable for consumers. The values represented
by the brand must be relevant to consumers,
having the culturally relevant meanings
consumers can identify with.
Brand is a cluster of meanings that are rooted
in the culture.

4. Brand meaning must be embedded in all
communication messages sent over to
reinforce a consistent, crystal-clear, unique
brand image.
Different messages of the different channels
must provide the compact stream of
information always conveying the key brand
meanings. All visual and textual messages must
be unified by the brand key meanings.
Brand meaning is what customers shop for.
Brand without a meaning is just an empty shell.

5. Brand meanings must remain consistent while
brand is communicated through different
channels such as ATL, print, POS, web, social
media, etc.
Brand meaning should be used by agencies as a
guideline, otherwise there is the threat that
the brand identity will dilute and become
fragmented during the different execution,
during different campaigns.
Undestanding brand meanings ensures
consistent brand experience for consumers.

6. Brand exists in different contexts: such as the
specific market with its competitors, high or less
saturated product segment, cultural contexts
with people’s habits, beliefs and attitudes which
all together shape the brand meanings.
For brands in order to remain relevant and
attractive to their customers, it is crucial, that
are anchored with its market, social and cultural
contexts.
Brand is not an island.

7. Brand contexts might be studied by, semiotics,
communication research, discourse analysis,
brand rhetoric analysis, creative interpretations
of consumer data and trend analysis.
All this can help discover, understand, control
and manage brand symbolic values over time
while communicating them via various channels,
enabling consumers to use them for satisfying
their personal symbolic needs.
Meaning is simply put a symbolic value of a brand.

8. WHO AM I ...?
I am a communication expert using
knowledge from different realms:
marketing, market research, cognitive
psychology, anthropology, semiotics and
linguistic to help build strong and
culturally rooted brands with
coherent meanings and the ability
to communicate consistently with its
target audience.

9. WHAT DO I DO ... ?
I help clients
create, formulate
or redefine the
key meanings for
their brands, so
brands remain
relevant, attractive
and aspirational for
their target groups.
I help secure, that
different types of
communication messages
delivered through various
channels will always be
in line with the key brand
meanings, keeping brand
image away from the risk,
that brand will become
fragmented and will lose
its identity.
For this I use a
transdisciplinary
approach, combining
specific knowledge of a
communication theory,
marketing, standard
market research, a
cognitive psychology,
commercial semiotics
and a linguistic.

10. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF MY
WORK?

11. To help brands create or strengthen the
brand identity by discovering unique brand
meanings, which would tap into consumers’
values and experiences rooted in their
culture.
1.

12. To help brands design communication
which would carry consistent brand
meanings via multiple channels over
time.
2.

13. To help brands eliminate contradictory
messages in their multi-channel
communication, so the brand positioning
remains clear and distinct over time.
3.

14. To help brands prevent or eliminate image
fragmentation, so the consumers receive
and encounter consistent, meaningful
experience via different channels (ATL,
print, POS, content, social media, web, etc. )
4.

15. To help brand develop, test, and refine
communication strategies that turn
audience insights into successful
marketing programs.
5.

16. TO WHO IS MY COOPERATION
INTENTED ...?
Advertising agencies
Public Relations companies
Experts of internal or external
communication in diverse companies

17. LUCIA TRÉZOVÁ: PhDr. Lucia Trezova has been working for more than 13
years in marketing and market research in the Czech
Republic and in abroad.
She specializes in new trends in brand management, so
her approach to brands and their communication is
uncommon and unique. She is a passionate innovator,
who integrates and combine knowledge from marketing,
market research, communication theories, psychology,
semiotics, linguistics and rhetoric providing the new and
extraordinary perspective on brands and communication.
She believes that people should cooperate, connect and
share their knowledge, because it is the best way to
create the new, inventive ideas.
Her services include:
• consultations
• market research services and
• trainings / workshops
regarding brands and their communication strategy
http://luciatrezova.blogspot.cz/
CONTACT:
PhDr. LUCIA TREZOVA
COMMUNICATION CONSULTANT
InSymbolsResearch.com
lucia.trezova@gmail.com

18. InSymbols.
MARKET
RESEARCH
& TRAININGS
http://www.insymbolsresearch.com/
Mining the Brandscape
1. BRAND COMMUNICATION CONSULTANCY
2. MARKET AND CULTURAL RESEARCH
3. CREATIVE WORKSHOPS AND TRAININGS