Flamingo's lead semiotician, Alfie Spencer
108St:
Can you sum up semiotics in a nutshell for people who aren't necessarily familiar with the concept?
AS:
I typically say 'the analysis and interpretation of cultural materials to answer brand, advertising, marketing and content challenges'. Which basically means that I use cultural theory and the analysis of cultural texts in a business environment, mostly in order to help with brand building and communication.
108St:
This isn’t the typical kind of market research that everyone’s familiar with, is it?
AS:
The consumer's own voice has been primary within research. The industry is set up to find out what people think and what they do. Semiotics addresses issues the other way round; we don't think first about the consumer, but about the world – the 'cultural software' - that surrounds the consumer and how meaning works in that world. And we aim to control meaning more precisely and build brands that are more culturally relevant (and therefore more successful).
108St:
Is there a danger that by debating the symbolism of advertising, we elevate it to a level it doesn't actually deserve? Could we be reading too much into something that’s essentially ephemeral?
AS:
It strikes me that the real pomposity in our industry comes at another point in the process, where we start thinking about the 30-second TV commercial or broader campaign as an act that's emerged from sublime creative imagination. Advertising is interesting, but it's not as interesting as feature films or TV programming itself, or visual art or music (all done 'properly'). Brands are interesting, however. Too much emphasis gets put on ephemeral pieces of communication, and too little on the connections between the object, the mythology, the narratives, the experiences in the fullest sense, that a brand can create. I think that the industry needs more rigour and precision in its thinking, less fluff and in that sense, debates about 'symbolism' etcmight be useful (if conducted properly).
108St:
When you look at advertising from a semiotic perspective, all kinds of meanings may start to emerge. But what if none of these meanings were actually intended by the brand which is the source of the message?
AS:
In the kind of interpretation and analysis that I do, we're not really interested in the relationship between the producer/maker and their 'intentions' and a text/item of communication. We're interested in the relationship between the piece of communication and the cultural world it is a part of – at various levels, depending on what the challenge is. I don't, for example, think that the 'meaning' of a particular ad is contained in any one person's head – least of all the creative. As far as I'm concerned, the people involved in making an ad (numbering into the hundreds, I'm sure) are just vehicles of a culture speaking to itself, and that's my starting point.
Of course, it may turn out that a particular ad doesn't use the right codes or structures to achieve what everyone wanted it to – and it's often my job to find out what went wrong, and how it could be put right in future creative work. Buthow that is done is an art – a craft practised by the very talented people in ad agencies etc. And my small role is to show how that is working, and which levers to pull to achieve certain things… the way that it can be done, to give everyone more space and more opportunity to make a great piece of advertising, or a great piece of packaging, or build a great brand from the ground up, ideals and all.
108St:
Isn’t semiotics just a luxury though, for large brands with limitless budgets?
AS:
Quite the opposite – we're a very cost-effective solution with limited budgets on certain kinds of challenge. And increasingly, everyone is coming around to the real truth in my line of work – which is that often it's more important, in certain circumstances, to give your brand real meaning inside a culture, and communicate as effectively as possible within a culture, than it is to understand the precise workings of a consumer's life. You're often better off spending the money on semiotics to find out how you should talk to your audiences, rather than spending lots of money characterising in ever greater detail who your audience is and what they think about you.
108St:
Do you find that elements of your work are duplicated elsewhere? In the marketing departments of large corporates, for instance?Or in planning departments of advertising agencies?
AS:
Not really, but good planners, good creatives and smart clients get this stuff intuitively. In those situations, I just bring the conversation together with, hopefully, a little more precision and clarity than if I wasn't there – because I'm analysing and interpreting day in day out and know about loads of different categories and what's happening in the culture more broadly. It's interesting that no one really replicates the semiotician's role – because often planners and other agency folk aren't given the time to.
108St:
Are you ever frustrated with the compromises between your academic role and the commercial imperatives of clients?
AS:
Not really – the academic humanities are having a bit of a rough time of it at the moment. Naturally, there are things I dislike about the front line of consumer capitalism. What I try to do is to bring together what's good about being in the 'market' so to speak, all the time trying to create the space for the freedom and curiosity of the academic world. I'd hope that that will end up as a 'best of all worlds' situation, but we haven't got there yet. The real truth is that everyone is compromised somehow – anyone who thinks they aren't is just lying – and the question is how you negotiate that and how you protect what is valuable. My academic commitments mean that I do better work for my clients – more rigorous, more careful, more daring. And the market forces me to work at a pace and with actionability that I think actually makes my work clearer and more intelligent. It can be a vicious or virtuous circle depending on which way you look at it.
108St:
Where do you stand on the 'advertising is dead' debate?
AS:
It depends what you mean by advertising. I think it's a question of losing the battle and winning the war. The 30-second TVC is probably dying, but the idea of a brand – the really big story in all of this – is here to stay. It will grow and grow and grow. And brands communicate; indeed, they only exist in their communication. When a brand communicates, that's advertising. So advertising will flourish. But I don't think it will have much to do with interrupting Coronation St. in the future. And that's a good thing.