Please note that one company partner voucher can be allocated to cover the cost of two bookings for this event.
£95 + VAT
£95 + VAT
£95 + VAT
Purchase this on-demand webinar today.
Join the MRS for a day packed with case studies showing how semiotics and cultural research are being applied to solve multiple branding and communication challenges. Examine innovative approaches and absorb insights from the luminaries of commercial semiotics. Hear how brand leaders are engaging audiences by recoding messaging into modern narratives.
Enjoy key contributions from:
Just Eat Takeaway, LEGO, Costa Coffee, Oxfam, Pernod Ricard, BBC Studios, Prostate Cancer UK
Book your place to:
Alice Francis, VP, Insight, BBC Studios
Amy Knowles, Senior Vice President, Research Strategy Group
Amy has worked at the Mix Global since graduating from the University of Nottingham, studying English and Spanish with a year abroad. She joined the company as a junior researcher and over time has moved into a strategy role. She leads projects by managing and supporting the delivery of brand strategy and innovation projects by working collaboratively with her colleagues and clients. Amy has worked on projects over EMEA, US and Asia, and loves meeting research participants, listening to their stories and bringing those passions to the client to inform their next steps.
Amy Wolstenholme, Lead Strategist, The Mix Global
Anam Parvez, Head of Research, Oxfam
Cato Hunt, Director, Space Doctors
Courtney Parker, Global Insights Manager, Costa Coffee
Courtney Parker is a Global Insights Manager at Costa Coffee and has over 10 years’ experience in the Insight industry across both client-side and agency roles. In her current role she leads research projects for the Retail Propositions team, ensuring innovation is developed with a consumer centric focus. Courtney also manages Costa’s Voice of Customer programme and is able to leverage this to connect customer experience learning with bespoke insight. Prior to Costa, Courtney spent a number of years working in the UAE, with clients across MENA – it’s this experience that sparked her interest in cultural research.
Greg Rowland, Founder Greg Rowland Semiotics
Gill Ereaut, Founding Partner, Linguistic Landscapes
Gill Ereaut is a linguistic research consultant and in 2002 founded the UK consultancy Linguistic Landscapes, pioneering the commercial application of discourse analysis to organisational challenges of all kinds. Before that, she spent many years in qualitative market research and was elected a Fellow of MRS in 2004. She is currently writing a book with the working title ‘The Way We Talk Around Here’, about the application and power of discourse analysis in the uncovering of organisational culture.
Jeremy Nye, Global Senior Insight Manager, Just Eat Takeaway
Jeremy has worked in the Insight team at Just Eat Takeaway since 2016, after a career spent largely in television (BBC, Channel 4, Thinkbox, Star TV, MTV, CBS...). This began after an MBA at New York University. He manages qualitative insights globally, including the customer closeness programme.
The shift in focus from television audiences to takeaway food was quite smooth: both involve understanding human indulgence, whether the joy of a solo sensory feast, or a life-enhancing shared experience.
Jeremy is liable to get most misty-eyed talking about entrainment - the way life's rhythms are synced through scheduled TV or mealtimes.
Joseph Chan, Global Head of Consumer Insights & Marketing Effectiveness – G.H. Mumm & Perrier-Jouët Champagne, Pernod Ricard
Kimberley Howard, Commercial Semiotician, VERVE
Kim is an in-house Commercial Semiotician. Her job is to understand how cultural meaning is changing through the analysis of changing signs, symbols and visual cues. She has spent the last 7 years applying Semiotics and Cultural Analysis for a breadth of clients across all sectors, from media to FMCG. Notable clients include the BBC, ITV, Unilever, and Estee Lauder.
Louise Horner, Head of Quantitative Research, Acacia Avenue
Quantitative research practitioner who loves finding fresh ways to make quantitative research more human and interesting. Communications research specialist and one of this year’s technical judges for the ad industry’s IPA effectiveness awards. Harbours a not-so-secret career crush on semiotics.
Lucy Hobbs, Qualitative Director, Boxclever
Lucy Hobbs is a Senior Research Director at Boxclever; with 25 years of experience at the qualitative coal-face her expertise has helped many brands gain a deeper understanding of their audiences. Lucy has a particular passion for ethnography & semiotics. She relishes unearthing unmet needs by exploring values, behaviours and beliefs and then sharing these with her clients in order to build their understanding, so that they can then go on to better meet customer needs.
Malcolm Evans, Independent Cultural & Semiotic Consultant
Malcolm Evans first became involved in semiotics and cultural insight for brands as academic consultant to Semiotic Solutions. Founded by one of his former students, this was the first specialist UK consultancy in the field. Over the next 25 years, with Added Value then Space Doctors, he helped develop semiotics into an essential part of the consumer insight and brand strategy repertoire globally via a transparent and scalable applied methodology. He played a key role in disseminating this through training workshops world wide, including the MRS’s Advanced Semiotics course which he convened for over a decade. Since leaving Space Doctors, which he co-founded, Malcolm has worked as an independent consultant focusing on training, methodology innovation, and client projects reflecting his social, environmental and biosemiotic interests. He spends half his time currently on writing and voluntary projects in the public and non-profit sphere. In 2022 he published “Semiotics Goes Business” (in the Methuen essay collection Fascinating Rhythms edited by John Drakakis) and Colonial Crossfire, a translation of Ioan Roberts’s culturally orientated oral history of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas war.
Mark Lemon, Associate Director, Sign Salad
Melissa Birkett, Director, VERVE
Melissa is a Research Director with 10 years’ experience working with major brands, including the BBC, innocent, John Lewis and Waitrose. She specialises in qualitative research, and in particular its application with senior leadership teams on how best to develop their brands to resonate with their target audiences. Her passion lies in blending cultural analysis and consumer insight to future-proof brand strategy.
Dr Nick Gadsby, Founder and Principal, The Answer: Strategy Culture Semiotics
Rachel Lawes, Founder, Lawes Consulting
Roberta Graham, Associate Director, Space Doctors
Associate Director Roberta Graham, works across the insight and creative strategy teams. over her 3.5 years at Space Doctors she has worked across many global accounts for brands such as Durex, Bacardi, P&G and Viacom. As a graduate of Central Saint Martins, she has a strong creative background and knowledge of design which she applies to her semiotic work to help create meaningful brand futures.
Royce Yahya, Senior Manager, Global Insights, LEGO
Ryan Hughes, VP, Head of Strategy, Humanity
Sadie Crabtree, Head of Marketing and Platforms, Prostate Cancer UK
Sadie leads the Inspire team (Marketing & platforms) at Prostate Cancer UK, using message research, behavioural science principles, and user-centred design to inspire people to join the charity and take their first action.
She led the development of the 30-second Risk Checker, a digital health engagement tool, that won the organisation a significant investment from NHS England to deliver the first-ever charity public health campaign funded by the NHS.
Her experience includes communications and media relations for progressive campaigning groups and trade unions, as well as community organising around LGBT issues in the U.S.
Tash Walker, Founder, The Mix Global
Tash Walker, Partner and Founder of The Mix Global, IPA 2017 women of tomorrow finalist, and ex-Chairman of The Marketing Academy Alumni. She previously worked at Futurebrand and BrandMe. Tash’s favourite pitch was asking a bunch of C-Suite marketeers to trust the team, blindfolding them and creating a tent around them in 30 seconds before asking them to climb under the table and pretend to be 5 years old. They won the pitch.
Teresa Ciccarelli, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and Marketing, Dairy Farmers of Manitoba
Tom Morris, Insight Manager, BBC Studios
Will J. Morgan, Associate Director, Spark Emotions
09.30 Welcome & opening address from the Chair
Dr Rachel Lawes, Founder, Lawes Consulting
09.40 From takeaway to everyday: a semiotic analysis of takeaways
Lockdown spurred an evolution of the food delivery industry. There was a rise in demand for subscription meal kits, in-home gourmet experiences and on- demand grocery delivery services. Fast forward to 2022 and Just Eat Takeaway saw an opportunity to reposition their offering from purely a ‘takeaway moment’ to an ‘everyday moment’.
Using semiotic analysis, The Mix Global, in collaboration with Just Eat Takeaway, collated a bank of over 3000 videos and photos to build a visual map of what everyday food moments looked like and pulled apart cultural nuances to identify consumers’ needs, moods and demand spaces. Hear how the insights from this research helped build a culturally-powered strategy to help shape the future of home delivery.
Tash Walker, Founder, The Mix Global
Amy Wolstenholme, Lead Strategist, The Mix Global
Jeremy Nye, Global Senior Insight Manager, Just Eat Takeaway
10.10 Demonstrating the value of blending semiotics with qualitative interview data and behavioural observations to extend insight
LEGO® City products cover a broad range of children’s passions. To remain relevant and competitive LEGO® wanted to understand how the packaging helped shoppers navigate their purchase and how it communicated the play experience for children. The project analysed cultural and environmental influences from the packaging and retail environment and combined this with shopping behaviour insights using eye tracking technology, observations and interviews.
This case study examines the challenges and benefits of combining semiotics with shopper understanding and demonstrates how LEGO® uncovered layers of human understanding in both China and the UK.
Will J. Morgan, Associate Director, Spark Emotions
Dr Rachel Lawes, Founder, Lawes Consulting
Royce Yahya, Senior Manager, Global Insights, LEGO
Felicia Thomas, Insights Innovation Manager, LEGO
10.40 Coffee shop culture
Costa Coffee is rolling out new store designs internationally. This presentation shows how pivotal cultural analysis, in each market, has been to understand how cultural differences influence reactions to design, brand communication and functionality. Hear how Costa store design is being adapted iteratively and optimised in light of deep cultural understanding.
Lucy Hobbs, Qualitative Director, Boxclever
Courtney Parker, Global Insights Manager, Costa Coffee
11.10 Break
11.30 Panel - A lens on the world: what does semiotics tell us about societal change?
In this show and tell session, panelists will discuss how conducting semiotic and cultural analysis in branding and communications research has afforded them broader insights into society, human experience, ingrained beliefs and behaviour. They’ll also consider what new signs and symbols are re-shaping discourse and changing behaviour.
Chaired by Dr Rachel Lawes, Founder, Lawes Consulting
Panel:
Greg Rowland, Founder Greg Rowland Semiotics
Dr Malcolm Evans, Independent Cultural & Semiotic Consultant
Roberta Graham, Associate Director, Space Doctors
12.15 Re-framing care across diverse cultural contexts: the role of semiotics in developing new narratives for Oxfam
This project employed a semiotic lens throughout to re-frame care narratives from the UK to Kenya and Zimbabwe. The research story will show how semiotics helped in the initial UK arm of the research to develop four new framings for care narratives in the UK. It was again used to tie together subsequent qual and quant exploration and testing phases and to develop flexible templates and consultation throughout the research in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Finally, the session will show how these flexible templates were used to design the research differently for each country and how it helped engage partners across diverse social and cultural contexts and with numerous stakeholders.
Dr. Nick Gadsby, Founder & Principal, The Answer
Maddy Morton, Founder & CEO, Lucid
Florence Mornat, Head of Analytics, Media efficiency and Consumer Insights, Shiseido
12.45 Lunch
13.30 Leather-clad baddies, feisty matriarchs, and the Queen Vic: future-proofing the cultural institution of soap operas
Soap operas are a British cultural phenomenon. Many of us were raised on soaps and the characters feel like our extended (dysfunctional) family. But today, the proliferation of content available, across so many platforms, leaves soap opera views waning. So how do we future-proof soap operas and evolve something so deeply grounded in routine and history, into a world that’s fundamentally changed?
Join Verve and the BBC as they discuss their ‘Future of Soaps’ work which sought to answer these fundamental questions. Explore the methodology and key insights and hear the client experience of delivering challenging recommendations to a category deeply rooted in love, attachment, and tradition.
Melissa Birkett, Director, VERVE
Kimberley Howard, Commercial Semiotician, VERVE
Alice Francis, VP, Insight, BBC Studios
Tom Morris, Insight Manager, BBC Studios
14.00 How G.H. Mumm champagne identified and embodied changing cultural codes of ‘Progress’
This case study highlights the profound impact that semiotic analysis can have at both a strategic and executional level for an iconic international champagne brand.
The multi-market project explored the changing cultural codes of ‘Progress’ with a view to G.H. Mumm embodying this value strategically and across touch points. Examine how semiotics and social listening were used to dissect ‘Progress’ between the East and the West specifically in the premium Champagne category. Hear how this analysis was filtered, using the key brand archetype of the “Explorer,” to identify and nuance the most pertinent cultural insights to aptly articulate G.H. Mumm’s brand purpose and drive forward brand strategy.
Mark Lemon, Associate Director, Sign Salad
Joseph Chan, Global Head of Consumer Insights & Marketing Effectiveness – G.H. Mumm & Perrier-Jouët Champagne, Pernod Ricard
14.30 Generating action through language
Referrals for prostate cancer tests dropped by 52,000 during the pandemic. Prostate Cancer UK needed the right messaging to generate action in men most at risk, without triggering unwarranted tests and putting pressure on the NHS.
This award-winning research demonstrates how discourse analysis of quantitative survey data and forensic language analysis from unstructured responses generated insights that led to clarity in the development of a clear, memorable, message for marketing, with spectacular in market results. Hear how the language principles and consensus developed live on in the charity.
Louise Horner, Head of Quantitative Research, Acacia Avenue
Gill Ereaut, Founding Partner, Linguistic Landscapes
Sadie Crabtree, Head of Marketing and Platforms, Prostate Cancer UK
15.00 Afternoon break
15.20 Embracing the dark side: the case for shadow maps
The semiotic square (or Map) has been a foundational tool and feature in commercial semiotics for three decades. However, the map itself has not fundamentally changed in terms of the way it’s constructed and the information it contains.
Shadow maps are inspired by ‘shadow archetypes’ and from ‘unintended consequences’ from speculative and critical design. They identify and plot not only opportunities but also the challenges, problematics, dissonances facing brands at a time of social, environmental and geo-political perma-crisis.
Join Cato in-conversation with an industry counterpart to discuss the case for ’shadow maps’ as a way to evolve the traditional semiotic map.
Cato Hunt, Director, Space Doctors
Susan Betts, Director of Brand Strategy and Management at Google
Mark Shayler, Founder and Owner of Ape, a business focussing on sustainable innovation
Al Deakin, Director at Space Doctors
15.50 Udderly brilliant! How semiotics helped create a modern brand identity for dairy farmers
This presentation will take the audience on a journey to Manitoba, Canada, to show how Dairy Farmers of Manitoba (DFM) used Semiotics to help create a more modern and vibrant brand identity.
The case study will walk delegates through how a series of brand identities/platforms were developed and tested with consumers via an online community and how semiotic decoding of brand typology, imagery and logo all work to represent the core values of the new, more modern DFM.
Amy Knowles, Senior Vice President, Research Strategy Group
Ryan Hughes, VP, Head of Strategy, Humanity
Teresa Ciccarelli, Senior Manager, Corporate Communications and Marketing, Dairy Farmers of Manitoba
16.20 Closing comments from the Chair
16.30 End of conference
Please note that one company partner voucher can be allocated to cover the cost of two bookings for this event.
£95 + VAT
£95 + VAT
£95 + VAT
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