Semiotica 2014 (200):335-358 (
2014)
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Abstract
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the applicability of multivariate
mapping techniques to the exploration of the rhetorical semiotic brand image
structure of ad films. By drawing on correspondence analysis and multidimensional
scaling, two techniques that are amply used in corpus linguistics and in
marketing research, but also on the data reduction technique of factor analysis, it
will be displayed how a set of nuclear semes and classemes or an intended semic
structure that underlies ad filmic discursive structures may be projected alongside
rhetorical figures by its internal stakeholders (i.e., a brand management
team, an account planning team or a marketing research team) with view to
attaining
differential brand associations. The illustration of the exploratory analytical
methods takes place by recourse to a corpus of 62 ad filmic texts from 13
sub-brands of the 3 major brands in the UK cereals market and 321 ad filmic segments
that resulted from the segmentation procedure. This paper seeks to contribute
to advancements in the brand image and advertising rhetoric research
streams by addressing distinctive modes of advertising rhetorical configuration at
the level of the ad filmic text (as against print ads where the bulk of research on
advertising rhetoric has concentrated), and moreover on a segment-by-segment
level, rather than treating the ad film as a standalone unit of analysis, by adopting
a multimodal outlook to advertising configurations that takes into account
not only the verbal or the visual mode, but also interactions among modes, by
adopting a product category-specific approach to advertising/brand textuality
that draws on rhetorical semiotics and by employing exploratory statistical
methods against the background of content analytic output.