As we know that semiotics is the study of signs and sign
processes in the society. We often perceive
the meaning of symbols like as we see images, hear sounds and feel smells. Our life is full of
signs; they can be found literally everywhere. Advertising is one of the media branches that widely
uses semiotics.
Advertising has always been using visual signs of
an established value, causing the usual associations, which take the role of
rhetorical assumptions. For example, the image of a young couple with a child
refers to the representation, "there is nothing more beautiful and
important than a happy family" and therefore then comes your (you as a
customer) conclusion "if this happy family uses this product, why my family
don’t use it?" The same applies to branding, where it takes the form of
applied semiotics approach. For example, branding- is a unique communicative
element, allowing the product to bind to a particular object of the symbolic
world, like in Marlboro cigarettes, where we initially think about cowboys.
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Image:
Marlboro (1971) Marlboro [Advertisement]. Available at http://home.honolulu.hawaii.edu/~pine/Book2/marlboro-ads.html (Accessed: 3 April 2012).
