Towards a semiotics of brand equity: on the interdependency of meaning surplus and surplus value in a political economy of brands George

Rossolatos BA(Hons), MSc, MBA, PhD candidate The commodity achieves its apotheosis when it is able to impose itself as a code, that is, as the geometric locus of the circulation of models, and hence as the total medium of a culture (and not only of an economy) (Jean Baudrillard, For a critique of the political economy of the sign, p.206) Introduction

To announce a semiotic approach to branding and by implication to the study of brand equity is equivalent to a tautology. And yet, it is through this tautology that semiotics emerges as one of the proper fields of research for brands as marks or /semeia and branding, as

process whereby products (commodities) assume meaning in acts not only of financial, but even more foundationally of semiotic exchange. The focal points of this paper rest with (i) demarcating branding discourse as a field of marketing research through the metalanguage of semiotics, (ii) the delineation of the signs and signifying practices of this discourse and its key terms, such as brand, differential brand positioning, intended and received positioning, brand elements, primary and secondary brand associations and brand equity in semiotic terms (iii) applying semiotic key terms, such as sign and code to the study of brand equity and revealing their potential operational value in managing brand equity (iv) explaining in semiotic terms why brand equity is equivalent to surplus of meaning and why brand stretching or brand extensions as a brands combinatorial possibilities can be accounted for by means of a theory of the code(s) (v) discussing why and how the conceptual rigor of semiotics may contribute to brand equity research, thus constituting an indispensable brand management tool. Overview of inter-textual transfers between branding and semiotics The bulk of research in the wider field of marketing semiotics has been concerned with advertising and not with branding, even though the latter constitutes the starting point for

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1 making sense of advertising. Based on the assumption of the autonomy of the sign ,

advertising messages have been analyzed extensively by drawing on their dimension as cultural signs and by implication by drawing on brands as cultural (eg. McCracken 1986, Williamson 1978, Stern 1996;1998), rather than commercial products. Despite the unquestionable validity of such readings from within cultural theory, media theory and semiotic perspectives, and the plethora of resourceful insights that have been generated in the process, interest on behalf of marketing researchers in operationalizing semiotic concepts in addressing various marketing phenomena has been limited, with the exception of Hirschman and Holbrooks The Semiotics of Consumption, Jean Umiker Sebeoks editing of the collective work Marketing Semiotics (a collection of papers on various applied semiotic approaches to marketing, such as consumer behavior, advertising, corporate image, new product development), Micks and McQuarries extensive publications on semiotic approaches to decoding and processing advertising messages, J.M.Flochs Smiotique, Marketing et Communication. At the same time, applied semiotics agencies have been flourishing over the past twenty years, providing insights to marketing practitioners and generating interpre tive models by drawing on semiotic concepts. Yet, no uniform branding theory has appeared so far with the inter-textual import of a robust conceptual framework drawing on particular semiotic theories. Despite the operationalization of semiotic concepts in discreet areas of marketing theory and practice, such as Flochs (1990) application of Greimas semiotic square in positioning studies, Kawamas (1987) application of Peirces topline tripartite conceptualization of the sign as index, symbol, icon into the process of product design and coining of a Color Planning System, Kehret-Wards (1987) application of the Saussurean concept of the syntagm in what he calls syntagmatic marketing research aiming to unearth latent syntactical similarities in the way products are used and in their promotion/advertising, while pointing to its operational value in the field of new product design, cross-promotions and shelf strategy in retail outlets, McQuarries (1989) interpretation of how ads resonate

meaning through the employment of figurative speech that transforms the relationship between signifiers and signifieds in instances of verbal and visual signs, by drawing on
As Ransdell (1992:[6]) stresses by allusion to the Peircean notions of sign and interpretant It is implicit in regarding semiosis as the production of the interpretant by the sign itself that signs are not regarded as being governed by rules in the sense of "falling under" them. The idea is rather that the disposition or power of the sign to generate an interpretant is the rule, which thus does not stand over and above the sign, as it were, but is rather an immanent principle therein. This is the basis for characterizing semiosis processes as autonomous or self-governing.
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Barthes Rhetoric of the Image, none of the existing semiotic approaches to marketing phenomena has attempted to provide a conceptual platform for operationalizing the concept of brand equity, which is the focus of this paper. Needless to say that the orientation of the inter-textual grounding of a theory of brand equity in semiotics in the context of this paper is foundational and by no means exhaustive as to the conceptual and methodological implications of a full-fledged semiotic theory that is yet to come. As preliminary methodological remarks in such an endeavor as a semiotic theory of brand equity Micks following words of caution are taken on board:

First [ ], there is a troubling tendency on the part of marketing and consumer researchers to use terms such as semiotics or semiology in a flippant manner [ ] Unfortunately, all too often these words [my note: signs and communication] are raised in marketing and consumer research without a reasonable discussion of which particular semiotic tradition or concepts the research is drawing on, and even sometimes without any accompanying references to major semioticians. Second, it is equally important that researchers strive for greater rigor in applying semiotics. All too often semiotic concepts and analytic approaches are not adequately clarified before their implementation. As a result, the value of using semiotics is ambiguous (Mick, in Brown 1997:244).

Brands as signs A brand is a sign or more particularly a super-sign in Ecos terms: Super-signs must be considered as strictly coded expression-units susceptible of further combination in order to produce more complex texts (1976:231) . A logo as the sign of a branded product or the brand identity of a brand name is a super-sign, as its components (eg. curves, lines, fonts, words, colors) do not make sense outside of its strictly coded context. Individual components as signs themselves may be tokens of different types, but in the context of super-signs they do not assume meaning as tokens of general types, but as semantically hierarchized components in the structure of the super-sign as sign system (eg a curve may be reproduced

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in an exactly identical fashion as a curve employed in the sign structure of a supersign, however it may not produce the meaning of the super-sign inductively simply by assuming the place of an elementary component within the syntax of the super -sign). We might say that individual signs making up a brands identity may be hierarchized semantically based on their synecdochic potential of evoking the brands name in the absence of all other signs. For example, Nikes curve is a hierarchically superior structural component of the brand Nike, as super-sign, as in the absence of all other elements synecdochically it may stand for the supersigns name. By implication, a colored shoe without the Nike curve could by no means connote the brand Nike. Would the same hold for the standalone presence of the curvy M sign indicative of McDonalds? Perhaps, but in a fuzzier sense, as the yellow and red colors are inextricably linked with the curvy M. But amid a range of interpretive possibilities it would stand a better chance of recognizability. Brand identity is not equivalent to branding and certainly not homologous to brand equity, but it is a crucial component of a brands architecture. What brands as super-signs point to is that brands function as cultural units in a semiotic space as strictly coded gestalts or assemblages or constellations of signs that are not meaningfully reducible to their elementary components, but wherein combinatorial possibilities are allowed for. The semiotic secret of brand names lies in the fact that they are not simply indices but also symbols and icons. As an icon it evokes mental images of the possible qualities of the product that are expected to be present in an item purchased with the brand name. The quality of a brand is also a symbol that is associated with our knowledge, experiences and our contact with that product (Nth,2010). A further qualification of brands as signs is yielded by Nth (1988:4) who contends that the system of commodities forms a semiotic system par excellence, insofar as each product category, as well as the ensemble of products as what Baudrillard would call a system of objects, is structured like a language. Nth proposes a threefold classification of brands as signs, which he calls prototypical frames, viz. the utilitarian, the commercial and the sociocultural frame, while adding a tentative fourth frame, viz. the psychological one, which is not operationalized in Nth s approach. Throughout the multi-frame approach he retains the Saussurean/Barthesian bipartite nature of the sign as consisting of two planes, viz that of the signifier and that of the signified, the former denoting the signifying form of the commodity,

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while the latter its concept(s). The utilitarian commodity sign is associated with features related to its practical use-value (Nth:op.cit.). Semiotic features of the utilitarian sign comprise technical reliability and economy. The commercial sign signifies the [financial] exchange value of a commodity in relation to other products of the system of commodities (Nth:op.cit.). The most direct indicator of this value is price. A brand functions as a sociocultural sign when its consumer associates it with the sociocultural group(s) to which he belongs. Most importantly, the frame to which a brand may be assigned is not a matter of some sort of inherent properties. As Nth observes, the category to which a product prototypically belongs is not inherent in the product itself, but empirically observable from the predominant mode of consumption and from the genetic or historical primacy in the evolution of the commodity (Nth:op.cit.). In parallel with framing brands under three prototypical categories, Nth (1998) also distinguishes brands (and product categories) based on the Barthe sian distinction between syntagmatic and paradigmatic axes. While the paradigmatic axis of a language refers to the possible (e.g. lexical or semantic) alternatives of and oppositions to a sign, the syntagmatic axis refers to its syntax, the rules for the combination of the signs (op.cit.,italics in the original text). Barthes himself exemplified this dual function of brands as signs alongside the paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions by reference to the product category of furniture (among other categories) in his Elements of Semiology, by stressing that the language of furniture is formed both by the oppositions of functionally identical pieces (two types of wardrobe, two types of bed, etc.), each of which, according to its style, refers to a different meaning, and by the rules of association of the different units at the level of a room (furnishing) (1968:17). The distinction between the syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions of signification is an important theoretical tool in applied and theoretical approaches to marketing semiotics . As Kehret-Ward points out, in paradigmatic strategy the ad focuses on attributes which serve as signifiers of the category in which the product is positioned and in syntagmatic strategy the ad focuses on the product's ability to combine with related products in use (in Sebeok, 1987:219).

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Differences and similarities between brand value and brand equity Branding is an ongoing process. Brand equity is the periodic culmination of this process in terms of brand value and the aim of the brand building process, viz added value for the producer and shareholders, in terms of superior to the competition financial returns and the consumer, in terms of increased satisfaction from the use of the brand. Brand equity is not necessarily correlated with superior to the competition financial returns, but with a higher probability of superior returns on the assumption that a differential positioning will translate into differential mindshare and enhanced saliency, hence greater probability of choice. What is the relationship between brand value and semiotic value? Brand value is not the same as brand equity, rather brand equity is the plenum of different types of value. How may value be defined in terms of a semiotics of brand equity? By addressing it as the outcome of different levels of semiotic exchange that occur in tandem, based on a brands partaking of different prototypical semiotic categories (utilitarian, commercial, sociocultural), as above defined by Nth. The concept of value has been extensively scrutinized among semioticians and consumer behavior theorists alike. Saussure in his Cours de linguistique gnrale offered a path breaking analysis of why value is not inherent in a sign but to determinants of the sign system, insofar as it opens up to the process of signification and the vertical relationship between signifiers and signifieds to horizontal relationships between signifiers and signifiers and signifieds and signifieds. [ ] a word can be exchanged for something dissimilar, an idea; besides, it can be compared with something of the same nature, another word. Its value is therefore not fixed so long as one simply states that it can be exchanged for a given concept, i.e.that it has this or that signification: one must also compare it with similar values, with other words that stand in opposition to it. Its content is really fixed only by the concurrence of everything that exists outside it. Being part of a system, it is endowed not only with a signification but also and especially with a value, and this is something quite different
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M.Holbrook spearheaded the consumer value research area from a consumer behavior perspective by drawing on the theory of axiology, defining consumer value as an interactive relativistic preference experience (1999:5) and coining a framework of consumer value, comprising six typologies or three continua, viz. extrinsic vs intrinsic value, self-oriented vs other-oriented value, active vs reactive value (1999: 9-13)

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 (Saussure 1959:115 )3. The value of a brand as a sign, therefore, is accordingly determined by its environment (ibid:116) in a system of langue and based on relationships of

For the sake of clarifying Saussures argumentation regarding the initially postulated difference between meaning and value in his Cours, which ultimately leads to a reduction of meaning to value, in the context of a general economy of signs as a context of relationships and exchanges, as well as to allow the arguments that emerge through this process of argumentative elucidation to function as the springboard for legitimating the ensuing key postulate of this paper that the signifying relationship is reducible to that between sign and signifier, in the absence of a signified in the context of a political economy of brands that functions through relationships among free-floating signifiers, I hereby proceed with the exposition of a set of circularities and contradictions in terms embedded in Saussures argumentation. The interdependency between meaning and value may be unearthed by addressing the circularity of Saussures argument about whether meaning generates linguistic value or linguistic value is the cause of meaning . [ ] the choice of a given slice of sound to name a given idea is completely arbitrary. If this were not true, the notio n of value would be compromised, for it would include any externally imposed element. But actually values remain entirely relative, and that is why the bond between sound and the idea is radically arbitrary (1959:113). In the first and second above-quoted sentences, it is claimed that it is by virtue of the arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified that value is relative. In the third sentence, it is claimed that it is because of the relativity of linguistic values that the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary. So, in order to demonstrate the axiom about the arbitrariness of the sign Saussure must first demonstrate that linguistic values are relative, but this relativity is incumbent on the demonstration of arbitrariness, which constitutes circularity. At least, what this passage shows is that the production of linguistic meaning and the production of linguistic value are interdependent. Earlier in the Cours he calls a sign a linguistic fact and in the section on Values he calls value a social fact. What the above argument shows is that these two types of fact are interdependent, however, due to the circularity of the argument, what does not appear clearly, is whether there is a causal nexus between them or just a relationship of mutual determinacy (if not co-extensiveness) . By now addressing how signs assume value I shall demonstrate why (a) meaning and value are interdependent, and hence value arises due to the relative meaning allocated by a community of interpeters to signs, which meaning is relatively fixed in the context of exchanges among signs in a sign system or a general economy of signs (b) contrary to Saussure, meaning is not reducible to value or at least this postulate is defeasible. In order to demonstr ate (a) and (b) I am drawing on the argumentation provided in Chapter IV (On Linguistic Value) and particularly the section on the value from the point of view of the concept of the signified (which, for Saussure, is of greater gravitas than the signifier- this is established, for example, in Saussures claim that whether I make the letters in white or black, raised or engraved, in pen or chisel- all this is of no importance with respect to their signification [1959:120], contrary to later theorists, such as Baudrillard, who reverse the relative importance between signifier and signified in an economy of free floating signifiers). How do signs and signifieds assume value ? The three major premises that bear the burden of proof in this section consist in the following (i) Meaning is not the same as value (ii) A sign assumes value in a system of values, which may not be reconstructed by adding up individual sign values (iii) But ultimately meaning is reducible to value (which contradicts i). Let us explore the validity of the statements that function as proof conditionals for the major premises. Saussure states that indeed value and meaning are often conflated and attributes this confusion to the subtlety of the distinction. So there must be something wron g about this subtlety. Lets examine what this subtlety is and what may go wrong, thus giving rise to a confused definition. The subtlety consists in distinguishing between vertical and horizontal aspects of relationality among signs that determine the whatness of which signs and signifieds (which are used inconsistently in this passage that should be concerned only with signifieds) are counterparts. Saussure reduces signification to the vertical relationship of the signifier to the signified and value to the horizontal relationship of signs to other signs, signifieds to signifieds and signifiers to signifiers in a system of language. First, In order to resolve this paradox, Saussure resorts to an extralinguistic fact (the exchange of 5 francs for bread as a real object), viz that of monetary exchange and monetary value, which merely affords to add another plane of confusion, insofar as not only horizontal and vertical aspects of signsrelationality have not been established yet, but resorting to an extralinguistic fact is contrary to what he explicitly assumed as the basis of his analysis in the beginning of this section, viz the word as linguistic fact and not the real object. Thus when he introduces the exchange relationship between 5 francs and bread, conceived of explicitly as an extralinguistic fact he only affords to add confusion on another plane, that of the existence of extralinguistic facts, that is the existence of referents. And insofar as the linguistic counterpart of this exchange would amount to an exchange between the signified of franc and the signified of bread, that is an exchange of two dissimilar words at the similar conceptual level of the signified, the legitimation of the exemplary and analogical usage at the level of an extralinguistic referent renders the signified dependent on the referent. So another contradiction in terms emerges, viz that whereas in the beginning of the section Saussure states that the focus will be words and not real objects, which is question begging given that

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objects do not have signification outside of language, he uses as his key example an extralinguistic referent in the place of the signified. Secondly, the confusion is augmented by attempting to prove that value is not fixed because of the f act that a sign can be exchanged with dissimilar things, viz a signified. But this type of exchange occurs vertically, and vertical relations are pertinent to meaning and not value. Moreover, in this argument another dimension is introduced in the signifying relationship between sign and signified, that of exchange. Up until now signified only related (in an abstract sense, not qualified as exchange) with sign by virtue of being the counterpart of a signifier in a relationship of signification. Now,the signified is postulated as being exchangeable for the sign (concept for word), rightly so based on the newly introduced principle that words may be exchanged for dissimilar things, but fallaciously so insofar as no relationship of exchange amongst sign, signifier and signified has been postulated so far. Third, by allocating the nature of complementarity to the vertical type of exchange in a system of exchanges that includes both horizontal and vertical exchanges assumes that the two planes are comparable, which does not hold, as it was postulated that signification and value are not the same, thus it is like complementing apples with grapes and summing up their total as ?. Fourth, the proposition that its [eg the signs] content is only fixed by the concurrence of everything that exists outside it , assuming that content is equivalent to the signs value, would amount to the possibility of determining a signs value only upon comparison with all other signs values (insofar as value presupposes the existence of a value system that is not reducible to, but in excess of the sum of its parts). This argument is self -defeating insofar as (i) the value of a system of values has been defined in excess of the sum of its parts (ii) if a signs value may not be fixed unless compared to other signs values, then all values are by definition liquid and non-fixable and this postulate leads to infinite regress as in order to determine the value of X one must first determine the value of Y but the value of value of Y depends on the fixation of the value of Z and so on ad infinitum. The example mutton-sheepmouton does not afford to resolve the above regress insofar as it concerns a definite set of exchangeable signs , while the above stated conditional of concurrence of all values concerns an indefinite set. Thus, in order to determine the value of mutton vs sheep it is not sufficient to compare it to the value in another language, but one should compare it to the indefinite set of values of signs in the same language, that is mutton vs sheep vs rhinoceros vs chocolate vs my uncles hat etc. Thus, the culminating proposition the value of each term depends on its environment does not clarify whether environment is a definite set of signs that are exchangeable due to some sort of semantic contiguity (even though the example of mouton would suggest that there is a highly pragmatic dimension to the exchangeability among concepts as in the context of the example exchangeability is instituted in a serving predicament) or the entire set of signs making up a language. But, given the already stated impossibility of fixing the value of a sign or signified (which are used inconsistently in this section which is supposed to deal only with the value of the signified) unless a system of values is presupposed which is not the sum of its parts, then closing off the argument in a definite set of signs would contradict the openness of the system of values. Therefore, determining the value of a signified through the concurrence of all other values is both a contradiction in terms (given that the system is not the sum of its parts) and impossible, insofar as comparison does not necessarily occur within a definite set of signs (and if it were conditions of similarity should be introduced first). Fifth, by extension, the concluding argument of this section that renders signification dependent on value (in contradiction to their non-identity, but complementary to and as a qualification of their initially interdependent nature) is defeasible. More particularly, Saussure concludes the section with the premise If I state simply that a word signifies something when I have in mind the association of a sound-image with a concept, I am making a statement that may suggest what actually happens, but by no means am I expressing the linguistic fact in its essence and fulness. The proof for the validity of this premise is yielded in the immediately prior conditional statement (its conditionality rests with the fact that this minor premise was meant originally to lend credence to the major premise that a sign assumes value in a system of values) [ ] it is clear that a concept is nothing, that is only a value determined by its relations with other similar values and [ ] without them the signification would not exist, which postulates two things (i) that the value of the signified is determined by other similar values, while the scope of similarity was found to rest with an expanded system of values, which transcends part-values (ii) signification is reducible to value, which is a contradiction in terms, given that value arises through exchanges and exchanges may occur both through similar and dissimilar things, thus signification as vertical relationship between signified and sign is not necessarily reducible to value as horizontal relationship between signifieds and signifieds. Thus, insofar as the conditional statement does not hold, the major premise does not hold either and the notion of fulness is not justifiable. From the argumentation thus far it has emerged that based on Saussures terms or, rather, contradictions in terms meaning is not reducible to value , but they are interdependent insofar as the meaning of a linguistic fact assumes value as a social fact. Therefore, in order to qualify the mode of relationality between the two terms, it is not a matter of reducibility of one to the other, but a matter of irreducible exchangeability. Mouton makes sense as it is, irrespective of whether I am exchanging mutton for sheep in a concre te predicament of exchange between linguistic facts, while the linguistic fact is exchanged for a social fact when I exchange a piece of mutton for five francs or when I exclude a piece of rhinoceros and include a piece of mutton as part of a meal.

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similarity and substitutability, prescribed by a system of horizontal (syntagmatic) and vertical (paradigmatic) relations. Thus, value as financial value may be defined by allocating a price to a brand as a commercial sign, as a plenum of intangible assets (such as practiced by Interbrand and Brand Finance), by comparing and contrasting it to other brands in the same system of signs; value as the relative utility of owning and using a brand as a utilitarian sign by consumers or a brands use or functional value that gives rise to and is in turn determined by primary brand associations, in Kellers terms , by comparing and contrasting its use value against similar products; but also sociopsychological value or the intangible aspects exchanged in the act of owning and using a brand, which give rise to and are in turn determined by secondary brand associations, in Kellers terms (which may arise even in the absence of actual brand
Regarding the possibility of dropping the signified without violating signification, Saussure distinguishes in his Cours between real object and linguistic fact, which does presuppose the existence of the extralinguistic referent, which is not accounted for. I shall draw on this distinction in order to demonstrate why the signified may be dropped off the picture, just like the referent. the signs that make up language are not abstractions, but real objects[ ]The linguistic entity exists only through the associating of the signifier with the signified. Whenever only one element is retained the entity vanishes; Instead of a concrete object we are faced with a mere abstraction(1959:102) This is a contradiction in terms . If signs as linguistic entities are also real objects, that is independent of the signifying relationship between signifier and signified, then they exist independently of the signifying relationship. But, according to Saussure, the necessary condition for the existence of the sign is the signifying relationship. So either the object does not exist as such or it exists through the relationship of two abstract entities, a signifier and a signified. If it doe s not exist as such, then it is not a real object and if it only exists as an abstra ction then dropping any of the correlates of the signifying relationship will not make a difference insofar as it exists only as an abstraction and according to Saussure, dropping either the signifier or the signified would reduce the object to a mere abstraction. So, unless additional argumentation is provided about the extra linguistic reality of the object, then we may assume that the sign is an abstract entity and as such there is no necessity why both signifier and signified should be retained. Thus, dropping the signified off the picture does not make any difference to the signifying potential of a self-subsistent relationship between the sign and its signifier. Given that the relationship between sign and signifier is self-subsistent, the real object as referent vanishes . Thus we are left only with relationships between signs and signifiers. The referent does not exist outside of language, but only as a sign/object in a signifying relationship with its formal properties as signifier and insofar as by virtue of their purely abstract nature dropping the signified off the picture will not affect the signifying potential of the relationship, then the signified becomes redundant. Why not drop the signifier ceteris paribus? Because the signifier is the carrier of the formal properties of the sign, thus responsible for its recognition and without it there would not be a way of recognizing the sign as such. The fact that the signified is not a necessary correlate in the relationship between sign and signifier becomes even more forcefully apparent in the political economy of signs and particularly in a political economy of brands. The most eminent example of such relationships is he fashion system, which is a case of free floating signifiers, as demonstrated in the ensuing section . What is exchanged in the product category of fashion, simply put, is money for pure form or money for relations between a sign (eg a dress) and its symbolic properties or its brand image . The above exposition of the circularities and contradictions in the Saussurean rationale and the critique ensuing thereupon resulted in (i) dropping the necessity of the signified from the signifying relationship (ii) maintaining the signifying relationship between sign and signifier (iii) arguing for the impossibility of fixing the value of a sign by comparison to other signs by virtue of this leading to infinite regress (iv) proving that by virtue of the system of signs being in excess of its parts exteriority does not refer simply to another s ign, but to a non-appropriatable surplus of the system (to which I shall return in the closing argument of this paper about absolute exteriority as what lies beyond the upper semiotic threshold) (vi) demonstrating how Saussure introduces the real object as extralinguistic referent through the back door. K.L.Keller employs the distinction ,in hjs brand equity system, between primary brand associations, viz. productrelated attributes and/or f unctional benefits (1998:508) and secondary brand associations, viz. non-product related attributes and symbolic or experiential benefits (1998:515)
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ownership, through mere exposure to brand communications, packaging and word-of-mouth communication), and all sorts of hypotactically attributable to the above value territories, which are indirectly reflected in brand valuation and evaluation proces ses in brand image scores. It is unlikely that one will encounter a pricing scheme stricto sensu for the aesthetic value of a soap brand (which forms part of the sociopsychological value of a brand), yet this value is reflected as part of a more general equivalence inscribed in the exchange value of the hypothetical soap brand. The sum of these latent equivalences constitutes the overall stature of a brand in terms of brand image. Such composite or aggregate image scorings, in combination with methods of importing perceptions of price elasticity, culminate in overall brand values, not directly in financial terms, but as relative utilities that reflect an overall psychological value of each brand and its standing or differential positioning vis a vis the competition, as a langue or system of brands or differences and oppositions to itself. Brand equity stands for the differential or surplus value between a brands book and market value, in accounting terms, which difference resonates the differential positioning of a brand in a langue as its semiosphere (as a plenum of primary and secondary brand associations, in Kellers terms), which resonates in its psychological value, thus qualifying Nthsfourth prototypical category as an aggregate of utilitarian, commercial and sociocultural values, attached to it by consumers. Thus, surplus of meaning is reflected in surplus financial value in the concept of brand equity. The concept of brand equity is equivalent to a promise of safety for consumers and superior future financial returns for shareholders. From a semiotic perspective, though, safety opens connotatively to a promise to consumers that the layers of meaning either currently held by a brand or potentially taken on board and making up its value, will not erode. What is called in the respective literature "brand equity erosion" denotes precisely the phenomenon of a brand's losing its semiotic salience among consumers. The potential of acquisition of equity by a brand as surplus of meaning, as it will be shown in the ensuing sections, is incumbent on their successful leverage of Code(s).

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Code as the necessary and sufficient condition for the production of brand mean ing A code is [ ] the set or system of rules and correspondences which link signs to meaning [ ] Coded realizations of meanings can themselves be recoded [ ] Socio-cultural norms and conventions can, rather generally, be thought of as codes, such as dress codes, politeness codes and institutional codes of practice (Cobley 2001:170-172). In essence brand equity stands semiotically for the ability of a brand to capitalize on a code or on a multiplicity of codes, as necessary conditions for the production of signs (Eco, 1978). In fact, as it will be demonstrated, the vantage point and at the same time destination for unlocking the conceptual potential of brand equity and concomitantly putting it to work in its multifarious operationalizations, consists with an elucidation of the semiotic concept of a or the code . The extent to which this semiotic transformation will be attained is incumbent on the degree of fit of a cultural code, as depth grammar or always already ordered cultural practices as texts, with brands and their producers, as addressers of signs and consumers as addressees and partakers of a code or consuming subjects. Thus, the code as an oblique point of reference at the intersection of signs and subjects as instances and instantiations of the code, constitutes a meaningful surplus that overdetermines the degree of semiotic fit between addresser and addressee. The conceptual reflex of this intersection at the level of brands potential for leveraging code(s) is imprinted in brand equity, insofar as it is concerned with the same surplus, as financial value purporting to measure meaning surplus. Therefore, the concepts of brand equity and the code are interdependent. Brands as dynamic semiotic entities erode in terms of their equity not because of or at least not necessarily because of their functional and/or non functional attributes, as indices and symbols erode, but due to the fact that codes mutate, sediment, transgress their boundaries and the relative appeal of their combinatorial configurations changes. In an era of proliferating new product development mortality rate and easiness of copying brand attributes and elements, the only source of sustainable competitive advantage and hence guarding against

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equity erosion, may be yielded by attending closely to codes. The invaluable import of brand semiotics as a bona fide standalone field of research lies primarily with its being attentive to the systemic function of code(s) as the underpinning of brand equity. In order to understand the allegedly cryptic nature of the notion of code as used in semiotics (which use varies among semioticians themselves, as amply illustrated by Nth 1990:206-221) and disentangle the concept from its more often than not uncritical employment in common parlance it is deemed mandatory to differentiate between the mode of discourse of semiotics in toto from that of cognitive psychology, on which brand equity related marketing research has largely drawn thus far. Whereas at the center of cognitive psychology lies the subject as processing unit of external environment stimuli, as a stable substratum underpinning meaning making processes, at the center of semiotics lies the subject as an already coded carrier of cultural patterns, value and belief systems . Even though the application of a mechanistic , Cartesian outlook of the subject as non localized , acontextual mind machine is useful in the face of the demand for analytical rigor and the compartmentalization of various strata of message elaboration, semiotics assumes a more dialectic outlook on the formation of the subject, as an assemblage of given cultural patterns and as the outcome of an ongoing enculturation process. The epistemological and ontological assumptions embedded in these vastly divergent paradigms surely lie beyond the focus of this paper, however it is crucial to account for them even at such a sketchy level, which will enable us to make sense of the notion of the code, of a codes giveness and why, as aforementioned, insofar as brand equity points to the limit of a brands potential (its added value), its inherent excess is tantamount to the excess of the code as brand meaning surplus. Prior to drawing further parallels between brand equity and the concept of the code, the latter must be demarcated conceptually and its structural properties must be qualified, otherwise the concept is operationally of limited value and risks being reduced to an empty signifier. In order to elucidate the concept I shall draw on three thinkers who have dealt either directly from within a semiotic paradigm or indirectly, by employing semiotic concepts in the context of
For a thorough elaboration of the constitutive mechanisms responsible for the formation of the subjec t and a critique of the Cartesian cogito and by implication cognitivism in toto, see Silverman, 1983, Ch.4
5

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their theoretical constructs, viz. Baudrillard and his early to mid period writings, Derridas oblique reference to the code in the context of his reply to Searles criticisms as appeared in Limited Inc and Ecos qualification of the concept in his early to mid period writings. For Baudrillard, what happens in political economy is this: the signified and the referent are now abolished to the sole profit of the play of signifiers, of a generalized formalization where the code no longer refers back to any subjective or objective `reality,' but to its own logic. The signifier becomes its own referent and the use value of the sign disappears to the profit only of its commutation and exchange value. The sign no longer designates anything at all. It approaches in its truth its structural limit which is to refer back only to other signs. All reality then becomes the place of a semiological manipulation, of a structural simulation. And whereas the traditional sign... is the object of a conscious investment, of a rational calculation of signifieds, here it is the code that becomes the instance of absolute reference" (1975:7). There is no end to the consumption of the code (1975:10). The key concept underpinning the function of the code, as may be inferred from the above extracts, is self-referentiality and the absence of an originary signified to which signifiers are attached. The abolition of the signified and the reduction of the latter to the plane of the signifier in the context of the political economy of the sign or commercial discourse as part of a langue of brands, contrary to the initial qualification of the function of brands as signs by reference to the planes of the signifier and the signified (as would be postulated by Saussure) constitutes a valid operative hypothesis in this paper, and has also been endorsed by Eco, as will be illustrated in due course. The code may be likened to an abstract machine , to use Deleuzes metaphor, which produces signifiers that make sense in the context of the codes own structural limit, which is limitless. There is no autonomy in the object qua referential reality outside the signifier qua epiphenomenon of the code, save for a social logic (Baudrillard 1981:68) that is responsible for the generation of codes as models responsible for
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The [ ] abstract machine does not function to represent, even something real, but rather constructs a real that is yet to come, a new type of real ity (Deleuze and Guattari 1988: 142).

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the production of signifiers.

What Baudrillard calls social logic as a sort of informal logic

responsible for the production of signifiers without any need for rooting in a system of objects outside the code resonates a common place across various semioticians and semiotic theories, from Saussure to Greimas and from Eco to Leeuwen and Kress, viz that signification or how sign-vehicles assume meaning is a matter of social conventions, which confer relative stability between a set of signifiers and the sign in which they are inscribed. Baudrillard does not qualify further the determinants of this social logic in his For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. However, in The Consumer Society he stresses that in the logic of signs, as in that of symbols, objects are no longer linked in any sense to a definite function or need. Precisely because they are responding here to something quite different, which is either the social logic or the logic of desire, for which they function as a shifting and unconscious field of signification (1998:77). Thus, the kind of social logic to which Baudrillard alludes may be conceptualized in Derridas terms as structural unconsciousness, as will be demonstrated in due course. In terms of brand equity language, Kellers secondary brand associations may, thus, be rendered as secondary non functional signifiers attached to brands as super-signs without any necessary relationship to primary, functionally related signifiers. Baudrillards employment of the example of the refrigerator is indicative of this crucial difference: 1. The refrigerator is specified by its function and irreplaceable in this respect. There is a necessary relation between the object and its function. The arbitrary nature of the sign is not involved. But all refrigerators are interchangeable in regard to this function (their objective "meaning"). 2. By contrast, if the refrigerator is taken as an element of comfort or of luxury (standing), then in principle any other such element can be substituted for it. The object tends to the status of sign, and each social status will be signified by an entire constellation of exchangeable signs. No necessary relation to the subject or the world is involved. There is only a systematic relation obligated to all other signs. And in this combinatory abstraction lie the elements of a code.

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3. In their symbolic relationship to the subject (or in reciprocal exchange), all objects are potentially interchangeable The symbolic material is relatively arbitrary, but the subject-object relation is fused. Symbolic discourse is an idiom. (1981:68-69, my emphases). What the above passage makes clear is that the product as brand, once dislocated from its strictly speaking functional usage and inserted in a general economy of signs, not only may take upon any sort of signifiers, but, as a sign it is exchangeable with other brands qua signs, for the same sort of signifiers. In this instance Baudrillard retains the fundamental elements of the Saussurean model of value, viz that signs are exchangeable for similar (other signs) and dissimilar (eg signifiers) things, but not only overturns the model in terms of the rel tive a importance of signified versus signifier as constituents of the signifying relationship (cf ft.3), but does away with the signified altogether, while allocating what would be exchangeable at the level of the signified to the combinatorial possibilities of the code. The exchanges that take place in such a political economy of brands or objects as symbolic materials that are exchanged for concepts or abstract signifiers (eg luxury, based on the above quoted example) are prescribed as possibilities through the code as horizon of signifying possibilities. Moreover, the above passage opens up another dimension of the political econom of y brands. Insofar as there is no necessary relationship between sign and signifier, and given that signs may be exchanged for signifiers, brands may be exchanged for any signifiers or secondary brand associations. But also, different brands may be excha nged for the same
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The use of the term symbolic in this instance and by implication the statement that symbolic discourse is an idiom by Baudrillard seems to draw on symbol as a special case of sign, based on Saussure s analysis. One characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; It is not empty for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified (1959:68). In the same fashion that brands constitute symbols, albeit without a natural bond between sign and signified , but as motivated and non-arbitrary signs whose signification consists in investing supersigns with signifiers through the process of intended positioning in a calculated relationship of strict codedness, they also constitute onomatopoeic formations (Saussure 1959;69). Again, whereas for Saussure onomatopoeic formations constitute marginal cases in a linguistic system, in a political economy of brands with its own langue, such instances constitute the norm (onomatopoeia not only constitutes an indispensable function of an advertising agency, but there are agencies specializing in coining brand-names). Each brand is a symbol and by virtue of its self-referential strict codedness it is idiomatic. By extension, the more a brand tends to institute itself as a code, the more its idiomatic langue attains to colonize a natural language. A political economic system in which all exchanges would be branded would amount to the substitution of a natural language with aspects of idioms.

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signifier, which is why a political economy of brands does not amount only to a general economy of signs, but also a general economy of signifiers. Additionally, even though there is no necessary relation between the sign of the refrigerator and its signifier, but this correlation is a matter of cultural contiguity, hence the validation of the arbitrariness of the sign, that assumes a necessary status through repetition and through a genealogically traceable giveness of the code to which it belongs, the distinction between necessary and systematic relation Baudrillard draws is operationally useful from a semiotics of brand equity perspective insofar as it points to the fact that brand differentiation in essence does not occur at the first level of semiosis in the context of a signs practical usage, but at the secondary level of semiosis, where a sign enters the semiosphe of re abstract signifiers in a system of interchangeable objects. In a similar vein, this may also explain why Floch, by reversing Kellers hierarchy between primary and secondary brand associations (not explicitly so, insofar as Floch did not establish a direct dialogue with Keller), contends that base brand values, or primary brand associations, do not consist of utilitarian , but of sociocultural ones (thus anchoring his argumentation in Nth s prototypical categories classification; cf. Floch, 1990:131). It seems that the more removed from its function as a utilitarian sign a brand is, thus opening up to the possibilities of being invested with abstract conceptual signifiers making up the semiosphere of codes, the more it is capable of investing itself with higher equity, thus rendering the horizon of appropriation of the signifying limit of the code equivalent to the possibility of higher equity. Thus, brand equity is tantamount to the approximation of a high semiotic threshold. In this context, what is interchangeable is not necessarily a salient set of directly competitive signs, but indirectly competitive signs according to a predominant social logic based on which codes are woven as contingently necessary amalgamations of second order signifie rs. Thus the value of the product does not rest solely with the exchange financial value of the sign, but, even more importantly, with the exchange value of the signifier, which is determined through a systematic relation with other signifiers. This value system as set of systematic relations is the code and given that systematic relations ramify endlessly the code is the limitless limit of itself or its own surplus value. By analogy, and this is perhaps the closest

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Baudrillard gets to drawing parallels between the concept of the code and the notion of brand equity, the commodity achieves its apotheosis when it is able to impose itself as a code, that is, as the geometric locus of the circulation of models, and hence as the total medium of a culture (and not only of an economy) (1981:206). The surplus or added value denoted by the concept of brand equity concerns precisely this potential of a brand to institute a code, to overdetermine this code as a set of differentially relating signifiers and not necessarily differential signifiers, while at the same time delineating a horizon of semiosis over and above what is already given in a semiotic structure. It is the specific weight of signs that regulates the social logic8 of exchange (1981:66). Baudrillards most forceful expos of the systemic function of the code with reference to a particular product category appears in Symbolic Exchange and Death, where he equates fashion with the enchanting spectacle of the code (1990i:87-99). Why choose fashion as the most eminent exemplification of the systemic function of the code and reduce the relationship between the code and its constituting the necessary and sufficient condition for the production of signifying units as encountered in various product categories to the relationship between the code and fashion? They [note: all product categories] are all haunted by fashion, since this can be understood as both the most superficial play and as the most profound social form- THE INEXORABLE INVESTMENT OF EVERY DOMAIN BY THE CODE" (1990i:87). In fashion "as an entirely self referential cultural field, concepts are engendered and made to correspond to each other through pure specularity" (1990i:91). Whereas in the case of verbal semiosis the code emerges through signifiers as a reflex, in the case of fashion the code emerges simpliciter as depth grammar and surface structure at the same time, thus constituting an exemplary simulacrum of infinite semiosis itself. Interestingly, Baudrillard equates fashion with mode in the sense of trope (it should be noted that la mode stands for fashion in French). Fashion, thus, constitutes the cultural inscription of the logical category of modality and in general the field of modal logic and the intersection of rhetoric, or at least its tropical aspect, with formal logic; as faon it is phenomenologically similar to the Heideggerian concept of mode-of-Being (in fact if one substituted Being with Code,

The same sociocentric approach to the way signs assume meaning is assumed by Eco; semiotics is concerned mainly with signs as social forces (1976:65); la smiotique ne sntresse aux signes que considrs comme forces sociales (1972:62)

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Heideggers existential analytic might as well function as a semiotic analysis of the systemic function of the Code) or a Wittgensteinian aspect of seeing, which do involve specularity at their very semantic core. There is no longer any determinacy internal to the signs of fashion hence they become free to commute and permutate without limit (1990i:87). It exercises an enormous combinatory freedom (idem) and thus constitutes, one might argue, the ideational limit of brand stretching. Baudrillard seems to be suggesting that whereas it appears as a pure play of signs, it affects deep structures such as sex, status, identity, which corresponds to the aforementioned chain of signifiers making up the semiotic fabric of a brand, which allows for inter product category comparability. In fact, deep structures are projections or redundancies brought about by the play of signifiers on the surface structure: not a matter of investing an a priori signifier with determinate signs (eg status with a suit) but of feigning the reduction of the pure play of signs into immobile signifiers- the ideational expressive fixation or sublimation of cultural praxiological content. Another crucial point raised by Baudrillard concerns the epistemological status of the dissemination and reception of signs. Baudrillard employs instead of traditional analytical cognitive categories, that are typical of approaches in the more general field of the philosophy of Mind, interpretive categories, such as fascination ( For a critique of the political in economy of the sign), enchantment of the code (in Symbolic exchange and death),

passive magic (in Simulation and Simulacra), in an attempt to encapsulate the fact that the appeal of signs and the formulation of judgments about their truth value and pragmatic relevance is not necessarily the outcome of a rational calculus, but the outcome of habituation and enculturation into codes, reminiscent of a Bourdieuan Habitus at play. It is the cunning of the code to veil itself and to produce itself in the obviousness of value. It is in the "materiality" of content that form consumes its abstraction and reproduces itself as form. That is its peculiar magic. It simultaneously produces the content and the consciousness to receive it (just as production produces the product and its corresponding need). Thus, it installs culture in a dual transcendence of values (of contents) and

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consciousness, and in a metaphysic of exchange bet een the two terms w (1981:119, my emphasis). Consciousness, instead of constituting the immobile substratum/processing unit responsible for the compartmentalization of an illusory signified under analytical categories, according to Baudrillard, is itself a product of the code, just like the content that is processed through it. A similar point regarding the epistemological status of the code was drawn by Derrida in his response to Searles performativity theory, as formulated in Limited Inc, where he claims that there is no such thing as a code - Organon of iterability - which could be structurally secret. The possibility of repeating and thus of identifying the marks is implicit in every code, making it into a network [une grille] that is communicable, transmittable, decipherable, iterable for a third, and hence for every possible user in general (1988:8). A key property of the code, thus, is iterability or its ability to appear as such implicitly through its manifest marks. In alignment with Baudrillard, it is not some sort of an a priori depth grammar that conditions the possibility of identifying a relative constancy between signs and signifiers, but an a posteriori inference based on patterned and recognizably so recurrences of signifying chains. However, that might constitute a precarious reconstruction of Derridas relatively unqualified argument. As himself stresses I prefer not to become too involved here with this concept of code which does not seem very reliable to me" (1988:10). He returns to the notion of the code by using it as the condition of the meaningful iterability of a performative utterance by posing this rhetorical question "could a performative utterance succeed if its formulation did not repeat a "coded" or iterable utterance?". Derrida seems to be setting forward this point assertorically, yet indirectly in a questioning format, perhaps in order to avoid a sort of reductionism of the code, hence appearing as liable to criticisms against inherentist structural properties of texts, against which much of his deconstructive attempts are oriented. Also, the bracketing of the lexeme /coded/ seems to aim at retaining its meaning in suspense, as a yet non identifiable sign, whose metatheoretical import purports to elucidate as a heuristic device the fact that utterances make sense by virtue of their iterability in discrete contexts. Assuming this bracketing as interpretively valid we are compelled in turn to qualify the sense of this extralinguistic, perhaps conventional codedness as condition of the possibility of sense making of

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performative utterances. Is codedness in this instance to be perceived as semantic codedness or as a contextual codedness? Let us recall that for Derrida there is no such thing as univocal meaning, save only for contexts (without anchorage). Furthermore, Derrida contends that oratio obliqua would not be possible to be excluded. In fact, he reverts to oratio obliqua in order to "elucidate" the isotopy between iterability of the code and cultural ordinariness, by the cryptic assertoric proposition that "ordinariness shelters a lure" . Thus, indirectly Derrida lays claim to the function of ordinary language as inevitable polar attractor, as, what he calls "structural unconsciousness", which prohibits any "saturation of the context". Bearing in mind that for Derrida there are only contexts, and that the notion of the code, if possible, would imply a radical non closure and a radical situatedness, then insaturability would amount to the impossibility of laying bare the code as arche-context, which may also be read as the impossibility of presencing of the prefix "cum" that comes alongside the text. Even more interestingly, he employs a similar to Baudrillard rhetorical stratagem in his

oblique reference to the code as lure sheltered in ordinariness, rather as an analytical principle conditioning the appearance of phenomena. Etymologically, lure includes the seme decoy (based on Webster lexicon) and in Middle Higher German it used to denote bait. Also, its derivative allure denotes to entice by charm of attraction. Both of the above, which resonate Baudrillards predication of cunningness of the code, are included in his argumentation on how signs function through a logic of seduction and lay claim to the manner whereby the code constantly transposes itself or abduces itself in an attempt to pin itself down deductively, hence its insaturability. In so far as constellations of signs, using Benvenistes term for signifying units, signify by virtue of the exclusion of other constellations, that is by their exclusion and their negation, the horizon of signifying possibilities may be likened to an horizon of absolute negativity. The surplus of meaning as abstract potentiality for appropriating more signifying constellations is tantamount to the possibility of appropriating the entire horizon of negativity, hence becoming all inclusive, at the ideal limit where all signs and constellations will have been syntagmatically juxtaposed, none left out. The concept of brand equity points precisely to that horizon of negativity as potentiality of appropriation of surplus meaning. Differential positioning, thus, constitutes a difference in itself, or provisional identity, as the springboard for opening up to

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absolute difference and the appropriation of the surplus of meaning. It is of no surprise that brands with high equity provide meaning even through extreme cases of polysemy, whereas for small brand players this would amount to a diffuse positioning and an inability to carve a distinctive mindscape. The higher the equity, the closer a brand to infinite semiosis, and the closer to instituting itself as code, the more likely it is to keep surfacing as univocal depth structure underneath the play of surface signs, therefore the higher its exchange value (not only in financial terms, but also in terms of the security shelter- provided by the very partaking of the code that lures). Despite Baudrillards and Derridas insightful descriptive remarks on the systemic function of the code, it is not yet clear what is meant by the concept /code/, other than a heuristic metaphorical device capable of pointing obliquely to the limit of semiosis as combinatorial possibilities among signs, and how brands assume equity qua potentially instituting themselves as codes. Thus far it appears that the notion of the code constitutes an ostensive sign, that is a sign that is pointing towards an abstract horizon of combinatorial possibilities, which in itself constitutes a step forward compared to the as yet unaddressed issue of the relatedness among signifiers making up the fabric of a brands equity, yet being wanting in operational terms. The theory of Code(s) according to Eco and how i t contributes to a semiotic approach to brand equity Ecos conceptual contributions are instrumental in elucidating the above. Throughout his Theory of Semiotics he employs the Hjelmslevian dyadic semiotic model, by equating signs with sign functions, connecting two functives, that of content and that of expression . A sign is everything that, on the grounds of a previously established social convention, can be
9

taken as something standing for something else (1976:16). Signification, for Eco, does not necessitate the realm of the signified and is exhausted in the multifarious relationships between signs (or sign-vehicles, which terms are used interchangeably by Eco) and signifiers,

Even though, in essence, Hjelmslevs model is tetradic insofar as he allocates two additional planes , one to each correlate of the dyad, viz. that of form and that of substance. For the sake of simplicity and interpretive clarity the model will be adhered to in its topline dyadic dimension.

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stretching throughout the planes of denotation and connotation (even though the former is reducible to the latter in the context of infinite semiosis). The function of the notion of the code in Ecos theory is systemic. It constitutes a meta-sign, standing for the cultural glue that unites sign-vehicles into cultural units. Despite the fact that no coherent definition of the code is offered throughout the Theory of Semiotics, while the concept is constantly elaborated as the argumentation progresses through vari us areas of o research within the general field of semiotics, certain definitional patterns allow for a sketchy classification of definitional approaches to the concept of the code, which appears occasionally like a deus-ex-machina in various instances of syllogistic aporias, veiled in what Derrida called the inevitability of oratio obliqua. A code is a set of signals ruled by internal combinatory laws or a syntactic system, a set of notions, a semantic system, a set of possible behavioral responses (1976:36-37). Eco embarks on the definitional journey of the code by opening it up to all aspects of a messages transmission process, spanning an initial state of a set of signs as a semantic system, the explicit or tacit rules allowing for the combination of sign vehicles into meaningful gestalts and the addressee of these gestalts as an already coded recipient of meaningful gestalts (reminiscent of the codes ability, according to Baudrillard, to provide both the content and the consciousness for its interpretation). By virtue of the codes all encompassing nature, one can thus alter the structure of both the content and the expression system, following their dynamic possibilities, their combinatorial capacities- as if the whole code by its very nature demanded continual reestablishment in a superior state, like a game of chess, where the moving of pieces is balanced out by a systematic unit on a higher level (Eco 1976:161). However, such an all-encompassing definition risks meaning nothing or at least not being operationally useful, while being reducible to stating the obvious. A preliminary qualification regarding the semantic dimensions of the code is yielded by Eco by differentiating between Code simpliciter and system-codes or subcodes (henceforth denoted as s-codes).
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The abbreviated form of s-code according to Ecos terminology seems to correspond to system code, even though no formal definition is furnished in the Theory of Semiotics that explicitly links s with system, but it is more narrowly inferred as such through the definitional contours. Benveniste, however, uses explicitly the term subcode in the same fashion as Ecos s-code. Insofar as Code (simpliciter) and in this case I add the qualifier simpliciter in order to distinguish the definition of Code as such from s-codes, in the same fashion as Nth (1990) adds the qualifier proper- is also of systemic nature, but functions at a more abstract and all -encompassing level compared to s-codes, I am retaining the term subcode wherever s-code is operative.

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An s-code is a system of elements, such as syntactic, semantic and behavioral ; a code is a rule coupling the items of one s-code with items of another (1976:37-38). In La structure absente he also refers to code (simpliciter) as Hyper-code (1972:111; he also employs the descriptor Ur-code in the same work, 1972:203), a descriptor, which disappeared in the Theory of Semiotics. In order to render the nature of the s-code more concrete interpretively let us take for example the s-code or the consumptive occasion called family table. A family table is an s-code, there is a manifest syntax (ordering of spoons, forks, knives, plates, seats) that signifies an intrafamilial bonding occasion as consumptive occasion and certain modes of comportment of the participating members towards the elements of the syntax. Based on Ecos theory this is a structure or a cultural unit. It is an elementary unit of analysis insofar as it is self-subsistent with its particular combinatorial rules and semiotic boundaries, eg if someone danced on the table instead of eating cereals, he would not be perceived as partaking of the s-code called familial table. If the forks were placed in the vase they would still not be perceived as parts of the syntax of the familial table. The existence of a set of plates on a table by itself is not suggestive of an instance of the s-code called family table. It is the plenum or gestalt of the (i) individual sign-vehicles (ii) the tacit rules for their ordering (iii) the manifest syntax of their ordering (iv) the pre-reflective, automatic comportment of the participating subjects towards the requirements and background expectations of the occasion, that confer to this semantic system the nature of an s-code. This set of background expectations also justifies Ecos assertion about the giveness of the code , which might as well be rendered as a pragmatics of the code, as a matter of learning and enculturation, rather than a matter of inherent semantic properties of elementary signifying units. In comparison and contrast to a cognitivist approach, such as Husserls, the forks and plates on the family table do not assume meaning due to a transcendental egos intentionality that appropriates for itself as yet unformed stimuli from some sort of unqualified materia prima by bracketing phenomena through epoch, but due to the pre-phenomenological giveness of scodes as intersubjectively shared and subjectivizing conditions . S-codes are systems or
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In an attempt to reappropriate the explanatory preponderance of how objects and phenomena assume meaning from the field of anthropology that was gaining ground over transcendental phenomenology in the 1930s, Husserl employed the term transcendental intersubjectivity, as an operation that allows the world to appear identical for everyone (a communalized transcendental life) (Husserl 1931:10). Complementary to the apparent question begging nature of this heuristic device as a way out of a syllogistic aporia it points on the inverse to what would be dispelled by Husserl as naive empiricism or naive realism, viz an attempt on behalf of a discipline such as structural

11

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structures that can also subsist independently of any sort of significant or communicative purpose (1976:38). It is a relational concept, which appears only when different phenomena are mutually compared with reference to the same system of relations (op.cit.). These systems are usually taken into account only insofar as they constitute one of the planes of a correlational function called a code. Through this distinction between code (simpliciter) and s-codes, Eco seems to be suggesting that the latter is some sort of overarching Ars Combinatoria that allows for the multiple disjunctions, conjunctions, intersections among the various s-codes. A semiotics of the code is an operational device in the serv ice of a semiotics of sign production (1976:128). Codes provide the rules which generate signs as concrete occurrences in communicative intercourse (p.48), the conditions for a complex interplay of sign functions (1976:57). Eco recognizes that the notion of the code is an operational device in the service of the production of signs. Insofar as signs by themselves do not signify (at least in the context of commercial discourse, in which brand equity is situated), unless they are conceived of as parts of one or various s-codes and given that s-codes consist of combinatorial rules for the production of signs, we may infer that signs constitute combinatorial entities. If signs may not be conceived of apart from their combinatorial ordering in various s-code syntaxes, signifiers, as their structural properties, are also dependent on s-codes. Also, insofar as code (simpliciter) allows for the constant redistribution of signs among sign systems and the

anthropology to replace transcendental phenomenological principles as explanatory of the formation of empirical objects and how they assume sense with a set of cultural practices in the light of which the giveness of the empirical world is safeguarded. By the same token, this criticism might be launched against a structural semiotic approach, which postulates uncritically the giveness of subcodes, against which one might formulate an argument of a so to speak metaphysics of the code, accompanied by cryptic operative terms such as deep artic ulatory matrix (used by Eco). In fact, potential criticisms might be launched against either side of the transcendentalist/naive empiricist divide (either under the guise of a realist or a soft nominalistic approach, such as the one endorsed by Eco) by post structuralism and critical theory proponents, based on which the relative univocity of sense-making vis a vis phenomena is the outcome of power relationships among social networks members and, rather than a product of a direct reflexive relation of like-minded transcendental egos, an instance of the asymmetrical distribution of information, genealogically discernible contingencies (which may be unearthed through sociological interpretations), impression management tactics and the very critical abilities of an interpretive communitys members to challenge the set of interpretants or signifiers that are stringed after individual signs. In this respect, a structuralist theory of codes may withstand criticism insofar as mutation and sedimentation of subcodes is envisioned as a genetically inscribed possibility. Moreover, insofar as signifiers are not predicated of signs in the context of rational calculi, but rather in the context of a process of enculturation, hence constituting cultural units, rather than logical propositions, claiming that the univocity of meaning is a matter of some sort of tacit agreement among transcendental egos, which would amount to the same processing of individual phenomena through the various functions of a transcendental logical mechanism (imagination, apperception etc) is at best an unverifiable idealist assumption. Insofar as the code furnishes the consciousness, as Baudrillard stressed (even conceived of at such a schematic level, just like the concept of social logic or Searles pragmatic mandate that behind the c ondition of the meaningful iterability of a speech act lies the replication of the same sort of intentionality) responsible for interpreting phenomena or making sense of phenomena in a particular manner or within a fuzzily coherent conceptual scope, the postulate of a transcendental intersubjectivity is at best self defeating in terms of verifiability.

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reordering of s-codes, signifiers also open up to the plane of infinite semiosis . Additionally, insofar as code (simpliciter) stands for a surplus of meaning as an inherent multiplicity of combinatorial possibilities among s-codes, and having established that brand equity is equivalent to the code as added value or the surplus in the exchange of a brand qua coded product, then the higher the equity the more open a brand is to the plane of infinite semiosis as combinatorial possibilities among s-codes and by implication as intra s-code combinatorial possibilities among signs making up an s-code. In order to render the notion of the code more operationally concrete and relevant in the context of a semiotics of brand equity, allusion to the derivative notions of overcodedness, undercodedness and extracodedness is of particular interpretive value. Overcodedness is tantamount to the closure of meaning or to the maximally elaborated coded interpretation of a constellation of signs. The operations of overcodedness, when completely accepted, produce an s-code. In this sense overcoding is an innovatory activity that increasingly loses its provocative power, thereby producing social acceptance (Eco 1976: 134). Overcodedness is a necessary condition for the recognition of the interpretive stability of sign-constellations and it operates as a stabilizing social force or a dominant social logic. Undercoding may be defined as the operation by means of which in the absence of reliable pre-established rules, certain macroscopic portions of certain texts are provisionally assumed to be pertinent units of a code in formation, even though the combinational rules governing the more basic compositional items of the expressions, along with the corresponding conten t units remain unknown (Eco 1976:135-136). Extra-codedness lies in between over and undercodedness and includes the extra semiotic and uncoded determinants of an interpretation. The as yet unfamiliar to a code elements are potentially inscribed in a given code (or manage to institute a wholly new one) primarily through a play of inferential probabilities, which correspond to the logical operation of abduction. To continue with the example of the family table, dancing on the table may initially seem awkward. However, upon the potential inscription of such a set of gestural signs in movies or ad films a certain sort of familiarity of the representation is established or what has already been called the security offered by partaking of the code (which lures subjects into

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recognizing the giveness of a constellation of signs as meaningful in context). At first, some early-adopters of cultural insignia may try this at home and thus initially marginally and perhaps progressively (as an indication of a special achievement to be share with the rest d family members or as a ritual of passage) institute this sign-vehicle in the constellation of signs making up the s-code of the family table. In fact, a genealogical approach to cultural practices would surely point to such instances of extra-codedness, where what initially appeared as alien to an embedded cultural practice became its entrenched component. Let us not forget that repetition lies at the heart of a codes coding. Thus, extra codedness is an indispensable condition of a codes expanding its combinatorial possibilities, towards higher levels of synthesis, as Eco stressed. Abduction represents the first step of a metalinguistic operation destined to enrich a code (1976:132). Extra-codedness is a necessary condition for brand meaning enrichment. It may be claimed that it occurs as an initially destabilizing social force or an emerging supplement to an existing social logic, which is necessary for innovation, brand stretching and the sustainability of brand equity. It is by virtue of subcodes that signs assume meaning as cultural units. In order to understand more clearly why codes are of the essence as explanatory devices for the meaningful production of signs one should have to look at limit cases of sign and code production or instances of extracodedness and undercodedness and instances of signs below the semiotic threshold. Such instances constitute limit cases as transgressive of boundaries and generative of types. An anthropological approach, such as Levi Strausss, points to the fact that every cultural system is based on a set of prohibitions and it might be claimed that a cultural order subsists as such precisely due to a system of formal and informal sanctions that lie at the very center of a cultural order as exchange values for transgressing its boundaries. Prohibition as the failure to ascribe meaning betrays the dependence of sign production in general on codes and the compulsory character of the latter, as a system of rules. Everything that lays claim to a certain compulsoriness exhibits a dependence on the dictates of the pragmatic-political code (Frank 1989:396). The imposition of a sanction as a semiotic act implies the prior enactment of destabilization in the interpretively shared correlation between the levels of content and expression, and appears as the outcome of a transgression either at the level of content or expression or both.

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It denotes that the semiotic act of circulating a transgressive sign or a code was not meant to be or that the initiated sign may not be exchanged for one or more signifiers or that the proposed exchange has already been instituted as prohibited. A mild system of prohibiion t embedded in an act of exchange consists in buying a pack of candies and claiming social status due to that packs possession. The claimant is prohibited by a cultural order the tacit correlational rules of which bar the institution of such a correlation between the functives of the sign. There is no subcode in the context of which such an exchange would be recognized. A heavy system of prohibition consists in the transgression of a traffic sign, in which case a sanction is imposed not because a correlation has not been instituted as such in a subcode, but because of a formally instituted correlation between sign and signifier (eg red light being monosemically correlated with the signifier stop) has been breached. There is no transcendental operation or intentional positing in making sense of such phenome or na reducing them to non-sense. The responses as social logic are inscribed and evoked automatically in a subjects comportment towards the signs, they are part of common sense. However, continuing with the mild prohibition example, which is of direct relevance to a brands differential positioning and equity, such a correlation (between candy and status) exists as a combinatorial possibility within the code of status, should one wish to approach this market phenomenon through this subcode (let us recall that coding is an operation that is largely dependent on the coder, there is no metaphysics of codes) A premium quality candy . may be produced, in premium packaging with premium pricing, distributed in premium delicatessen outlets. The rate of adoption, repurchase rates and quantified loyalty potential may be gauged among subjects who buy into the respective code. Upon launch with the requisite marketing mix such a premium candy may in fact acquire hig equity, or be h recognized as of added value or of surplus meaning within its niche. What this example is intended to demonstrate is that equity is (i) isotopic in a cultural narrative to added value as the excess of the code instituted in an act of a semiotic exchange (ii) isotopic in a cultural narrative to surplus of meaning as overcoded semiotic act (that is as an act that synecdochically points to the limit of a code) What is lacking interpretively is the

establishment of how such a semiotic act is effected on behalf of a subject in the face of a relatively undercoded incidence of a code. The answer lies in the leveraging of existing sign

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types and their respective structural components of other products that partake of the same code. The enchantment of the code assumes functional value not because it is put at play in some sort of metaphysical necessitas, but because of the sussessful re-cognition of the new brand as a token of a general economy of the code, including types of products with similar structural components. Thus, the depth grammar of the code is evoked through the surface structure of the signs, as a recursivity of the same signifiers inscribed in different product categories. And at the same time, the signifying social logic of a code is enriched by the production of new brands or brand extensions, which points to the dialectical relationship between code enrichment and the production of signs.

How brand meaning assumes value in the context of a semiotics of brand equity perspective Signs assume value as functives in a function that relates a plane of content with a plane of expression. The plane of content includes the chain of signifiers to which the sign is attached (having already established why the plane of the signified is redu cible to the plane of the signifier in a political economy of brands), while the plane of expression includes its manifest attributes (logo, aesthetic elements, music, gestural elements in a commercial etc). Returning to the initial conceptualization of brands, as signs ordered both horizontally/synchronically, based on their syntagmatic similarity with other brands and their substitutability as signs exchanged for abstract signifiers based on their signifying function on the vertical/diachronic paradigmatic axis, we may equate the content of the sign function with the paradigmatic axis. Given that the code includes both the syntactic aspect of signs ordering and the paradigmatic aspect as set of notions or signifiers (or semes falling under a brand name as sememe), both paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes are ways of translating aspects of the code. Now, in order for a super-sign as a configuration functioning on both paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes to assume differentially superior meaning, hence equity, to the competition, it must establish itself in a system of differences or differential values alongside all three prototypical categories, that is as a utilitarian, as a commercial, as a sociocultural sign. What will determine the value of these functions is the degree to which they are successfully

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exchanged for a set of signifiers or a set of brand image scorings. As already discussed in the context of Baudrillards political economy of the sign, the value of a product does not depend on its difference from other products as objects, but as already coded signs, based on the social logic prescribed by a code and moreover o the way these signs are related or n configured. Therefore, value and by implication brand equity are dependent on the diachronic/paradigmatic axis. Also, we have already established that such a value judgment may be made by pointing to the limit of the code, which is by definition limitless, based on the principle of infinite semiosis, but which may be pinned down temporarily from a notional point of view in a set of signifiers, otherwise it would not be of any operational value, which it is, as a condition for the production of signs. All of the above attain to clarify how brands assume meaning and differential value in a semiotics of brand equity perspective underpinned by a theory of code(s) and constitute valid descriptive propositions. But what are the implications from a brand managerial point of view or how does the assertion that the establishment of equivalences between the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic axes give rise to differential brand meaning and value?

Brand managerial implications of the semiotics of brand equity As a provisional answer to the above question this paper will conclude by addressing the applicability of the approach of a semiotics of brand equity, by laying bare how the aspects of the theory of code(s) may aid in the generation of brand equity, which spans aspects of the invention of a code or a sign, and the sustainability of brand equity, which spans aspects of the selection of signs or codes.

For the sake of clarity the argumentation will draw on what I call the The Generative Matrix of Equity Potential, displayed in Diagram 1.

Diagram 1 - The Generative Matrix of Equity Potential

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# " !    !      !'

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l fi t i f i tl i i f ti ili it ii i t l t iti i li i t lt lt i t f li i t t E t l l i it t i , t it t it f , i t i ti t ti ti it f f l i , i ti i ff t t i il ti l, ili i t , i t i i tilit i t t i t f f ti l it : ti ti t l i i i t tt tt , i i i ll t l l l li i t it f i l l f l f ti ; it t f l t ili it .P i t t i t i i l i t ll l i t it f t lt f i i l i i l i t : ti t l t f t l ti . f t l f i , i t , f ti t

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Level of novelty of sign-function Extension of existing sign function Discontinuously new

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i ti t ti l f i ii l l i i lit f i ti l l ti t i ti f f f t it lt li , it i it
Established

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ti t . , t

This configuration may be portrayed as a case of diversification, that is extension of a well familiar brand in a given category in another category where either no combinatorial rule exists in terms of an inter-category fit and where substitutability of signifiers in a paradigmatic fashion is initially of limited potential. In this case it is very important to capitalize on potential similarities in terms of surface structure similarities at the syntagmatic level either by addressing structural components of brands as utilitarian or sociocultural signs or both. Let us recall that undercodedness (just like every level of codedness) does not concern necessarily all aspects of the code. (iv) Discontinuously new sign function at the level of extracodedness

No familiarity with the brand-name and its expression plane; regarding the content plane, no familiarity with its function as a utilitarian sign, and no familiarity with its function as a sociocultural sign. This constitutes an imaginary limit case of configurative possibilities, an ex nihilo creatio, which lies beyond the limits of semiotics. As Eco stresses, there is no ex nihilo or ex novo creation. (v) Extension of existing sign function at the level of extracodedness

Neither leading brand in terms of familiarity, nor wholly new , or an extension of a leading or a non-leading brand in its category; limited potential as a commercial sign and need for leveraging different combinatorial possibilities as a utilitarian or sociocultural sign. Medium equity potential. (vi) Established sign function at the level of extracodedness

This may be a case of either brand extension or diversification, but the combinatorial logic driving them must be wholly new, hence augmented effort for justification of the brand proposition. (vii) Discontinuously new sign function at the level of overcodedness

No familiarity with the sign-function, but high equity potential due to the strictly closed meaning of the code in which it aspires to be embedded The decision lies more with the . selection of brand elements as semes at the content level and their credible, unique, appealing transformation into the level of expression. (viii) Extension of existing sign function at the level of overcodedness

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Not leading brand in terms of familiarity, but not wholly new either or an extension of a leading or a non-leading brand in its category; ample potential as a commercial sign and need for leveraging different combinatorial possibilities as a utilitarian and sociocultural sign. High equity potential. (ix) Established sign function at the level of overcodedness

These brands constitute usually not only established brand players, but with high equity. They stand synecdochically for codes and occasionally constitute codes themselves.

The principal aim of the mapping of the above configurations rests with providing an exhaustive set of interactions among brands as super-signs that may be defined based on the three prototypical categories provided by Nth and their level of novelty (in terms of their familiarity and resonance with distinctive addressees or target groups) and of the level of codedness that accompanies each configurative possibility with view to the potential of generating and sustaining brand meaning and brand equity.

Insofar as branding is a dynamic process and brands are dynamic objects, the achievement of high brand equity (as obtained in a historical snapshot of metrics) in itself is no guarantee of a brands sustainability. From a managerial point of view, sustainability of brand equity may be achieved by constantly scrutinizing the potential opened up through the various configurations of the above illustrated Generative Matrix of Equity Potential. The optimal way to approach the potential for equity generation is to address how codes emerge in the first place. Eco addresses the issue of emergence not in the context of codes, but in the context of individual signs (even though at its most radical , that is invention, the process is equivalent to the emergence of codes), but the method reflects the mode of a codes enrichment, as already exposed in the context of the potentiality of inscribing a set of gestural signs as dancing as part of the subcode of a family table.

The initial stage of the selection of signs as sources of brand equity (and by implication as brand communications stimuli, which constitutes a further research area) is the most critical one. Unless a clear understanding of the systemic function and the operational value of code

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(simpliciter) and subcodes has been established first, the possibility of making a meaningful selection of signs as sources of brand equity and by implication their ability to constitute meaningful gestalts in the exchange of brands qua super-signs in different contexts and circumstances would be an impossible task. This impossibility is a genetic, so to speak, determinant of the very nature of the sign as member of a system of differences and oppositions. The mode of selection of a sign does not stem from some sort of univocal and linear relationship to a signifier , but in the context of a semiotic judgment, which amounts to an existentialist judgment, viz the endorsement of a course of action [or a semiotic act] among a theoretically infinite number of possibilities. It is by virtue of excluding other signs in a system of differences and oppositions that a sign is selected, which act by itself does not lead to the closure of the selected signs or sign systems meaning as intentional projection on behalf of a brand owner of a set of semantic markers onto semiotic space, but rests with the addressee. Each time I confer a semiotic judgment I predicate a seme of a sememe, or I add a signifier to the potential value set of a sign, as added content or another sign as an enrichment of its plane of expression. In essence, its predication consists of an added value. However, this addition takes place at the level of the addresser or the brand owner and as already illustrated this initial action does not assume meaning unless inscribed in an act of exchange or a semiotic act during which the sign assumes value (value emerges only in acts of exchange). It is at the very juncture of this act that a sign becomes an interpretant (in Peirces terms) for a consumer or a consumer segment, and assumes meaning. In the act of exchange the sign is transformed into an interpretant or a brand related association. In terms of the modalities for effecting these transformations Eco (1976:75) suggests three routes, viz (i) by pure phonic analogy (ii) by homology or cultural classification (iii) by the ability to combine various morphemes with the same lexeme.

From a decoding perspective there are various quantitative and qualitative metho for ds describing (eg associative networks) and quantifying (eg through measuring the links from node to node and from node to links in a network) associations, but these methods do not address the modalities whereby transformations from signs to associations are effected in the

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first place, save for stating descriptively the fact that such associations emerge. Ecos remarks on how signs give rise to associations are pathbreaking, but they require elaboration prior to becoming operationally useful. In an attempt to elaborate on these remarks the following should be taken into account by each class of transformative modality:

(i) (ii) (iii)

Pure phonic analogy Homology or cultural classification The ability to combine various lexemes with the same morpheme

From a semiotic point of view (i) and (iii) are of limited potential, as they concern purely linguistic aspects, which do form part of a nexus of analogies and abilities, but are not reducible to phonic analogies and morphematic abilities from a semiotic perspective (and Hjelmslev himself has argued extensively against a linguistic reductionism to phonological elements). It is (ii) that opens up the encoding horizon, while delivering it from the strictly speaking isomorphic dimensions of (i) and (iii) to isotopic possibilities, by rendering a brand qua super-sign capable of occupying through the functions of homology and isotopy the same semantic markers in a semiotic space through the employment of different lexemes and sememes or, simply put, to connote the same signifiers through the alternating employment of different signs, sign systems and classes of signs. How is this homology established? By leveraging given subcodes, inventing new ones or transforming existing ones. To this process another crucial dimension should be added, that of discursive genre, which concerns more the stylistic and syntagmatic aspect of a sub code as cultural classification, rather than the signifier that is connoted isotopically through the variable investment of a super-sign with other sign-vehicles (its enrichment). And homology as constitutive of a signs assuming meaning through its inscription in various subcodes concerns the transformative aspect of a sign by leveraging an existing or various subcodes. It does not explain or render interpretively clear how a brand ultimately crystallizes as code. The latter may be interpreted by reversing the process whereby signs assume meaning by leveraging subcodes, which furnishes the proposition that codes assume meaning by leveraging signs. The more central the function (either on a content or expression plane) of a sign in the operation of a code within a cultural

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system the more the sign becomes synecdochically homologous to the code and in more codes it attains to function centrally the more it assumes the value of an Ur-code (to use Ecos term from La structure absente). The modality is still the same, homology, but the centrality of the brand qua super-sign in a semiotic tree (that would comprise both supersigns and subcodes) changes from hypotactic to hypertactic. Insofar as such an interpretation addresses the definitional aspect of a subcode as syntax and as combinatorial component, but leaves unaddressed the aspect of combi atorial rule we may extend the function of n homology from semantic component in an order of objects to its rule-like function delineating the combinatorial possibilities surrounding it. As an example, a McDonalds burger as a , subcode itself, is a rule delineating the combinatorial possibilities with other signs (fries, salad, drink), insofar as due to its centrality it determines what other products may be stringed with it in its combinatorial scope, whereas a bottle of wine is determined by the main course, as a non-central combinatorial component in the courses combinatorial scope These constant . interpretive transformations or recontextualizations constitute what phenomenology of modes of sign production. Eco describes as a

Having thus far described the mutually presupposing nature of brands qua super-signs and subcodes as the condition of their meaningful inscription with signifiers and Code as a generic Ars Combinatoria among sub codes, let us briefly dwell on the marginal case of radical sign invention, which corresponds to the configurative possibility (iv) in the Generative Matrix of Brand Equity Potential (Graph 1). This case, which was described as per definitionem impossible, points to the limit of the code, which has already been postulated as its own limitless limit of production and may be linked to absolute exteriority, beyond the upper semiotic threshold as a reduction ad absurdum pointing to the limits of the code.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper was to lay the conceptual foundations for a semiotics of brand equity. In the course of the argumentation an attempt was made to demonstrate the interdependency of the financial value of a brand on three prototypical value territories, which account for brand

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meaning, thus constituting the semiotic value of brand that is reflected in accounting terms in the difference between book and market value. The generation and sustenance of brand equity as meaning surplus and surplus of exchange value embedded in complementary meaning dimensions is dependent on semiotic codes and the latter are enriched by the constant production and stretching of brands. The Generative Matrix of Brand Equity potential was introduced as a portrayal of the multiple interdependencies between aspects and levels of codedness and the relative novelty of a brand as sign, while pointing to the various stages of building brand equity up to the point of a brands instituting itself as a code.

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About the author (www.grossolatos.com)

George Rossolatos is an experienced marketing practitioner, with extensive experience in advertising, marketing research and brand management. He holds a BA(Hons) in Philosophy from the University of Essex, an MSc in Marketing from Manchester Business School, during which he coined the model of Consumer Psychoanalysis and an MBA from Strathclyde Business School, including research in the field of brand equity. He also conducted part-time PhD research in the field of Brand Equity and Integrated Marketing Communications at Manchester Business School. He is currently a PhD Candidate in the field of Marketing Semiotics, with the intent of carving a semiotic model of brand equity. He has edited and coauthored a book on Interactive Advertising (Interactive Advertising: Dynamic Communication in the Information Era, Libris Tech Publications), translated FT Publications Mastering Marketing into Greek and published 300+ articles in marketing related trade journals. His research interests rest with effecting inter-textual cross-fertilizations between marketing and semiotics discourses with an applicable managerial orientation, also informed by disciplines such as accounting and finance, brand valuation, branding, advertising effectiveness, consumer behavior, phenomenology, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, anthropology, communication theory, cultural studies. email: grossolattos@yahoo.com

Copyright 2011 George Rossolatos.

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