Semiotics & Cultural Insight 2023

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