Seminar at the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies

This is the first in a series of lectures on cognitive business semiotics and intercultural cognition and communication launched by the Department of International Culture and Communication Studies.

Lucia Santaella: Semiotic in the mix of marketing research
Marketing determines the set of operations which involve the life of commodities, from the planning of its production to the moment when, supported by advertising strategies, it is finally purchased by the consumer. To fulfill its role, marketing has to incorporate not only a mix of services, prices, communication, and distribution, but also a mix of researches. These researches embrace qualitative research, mainly in the form of focus groups, ethnographic research, neuroscience and consuming behavior. The aim of this paper is to discuss the relevance of semiotic analysis of advertising campaigns and products in the context of this mix of researches. Semiotic analysis is not meant to substitute the other types of research but to function as a complement to them.

Winfried Nöth: Adding values: A semiotic strategy in advertising
A major goal of an advertising campaign is to increase, in the consumers' minds, the value of the product for sale. Since advertising campaigns have no influence on the real values of the products which they present, their strategies of increasing the values to the product are semiotic ones. Iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs of values are presented next to the product with the purpose of creating associations between the product and these values in the consumers' minds. The goal of such associations is the transfer of semiotic values to the ones of the product for sale.

The Speakers:

Lucia Santaella
is professor of theoretical and applied semiotics and Director of the post-graduate program in Technologies of Intelligence and Digital Design at São Paulo Catholic University. She is honorary President of the Latin American Semiotic Federation and was the President of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society, USA, in 2007. She was an invited professor at Freie Universität, Berlin (1987), Valencia University, Spain (2004), and Kassel University, Germany (2009). Her recent research interests are turned toward Cognitive Semiotics, Cyberculture, and Art and Science. She edited eleven and is the author of thirty books as well as hundreds of articles in Brazil and abroad. Email: lbraga@pucsp.br

Winfried Nöth
is Professor of English Linguistics and Semiotics at the University of Kassel, Visiting Professor at the Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC), Honorary Member of the International Ass. for Visual Semiotics, and former President of the German Ass. for Semiotic Studies. His research interests include general semiotics, C. S. Peirce, semiotic linguistics, semiotics of nature, computer semiotics, semiotics of the media, esp. of the image and of maps. Among his recent book publications are Handbuch der Semiotik (2nd ed., 2000); Comunicação e semiótica (2004 with L. Santaella), Semiotic Bodies, Aesthetic Embodiments, and Cyberbodies (2006), Self-Reference in the Media (2007 with N. Bishara), Palavra e imagem nas mídias (2009) and Estratégias semióticas da publicidade (2010; both with L. Santaella). Email: noeth@uni-kassel.de

Registration:
All are welcome. Registration not necessary.

Further information:
Søren Brier, sb.ikk@cbs.dk

Organized by:
Department of International Culture and Communication Studies