A little while ago, I was asked to have a look at how to boost the new business success rate for a WPP-owned digital agency in London.
It was a dismal experience, starting as soon as I went through the front door and presented myself to the lady on Reception, who took a long time to look up and acknowledge my arrival. She was very low energy.
Looking round, I felt my energy levels beginning to fall out of the sky, too.
The room had a grey floor. The walls were white or black, depending upon which way I faced. Black is the colour of death, mourning and the night. Grey is one of the colours of depression. White is often linked to tranquillity, but it only added to the gloomy atmosphere. The colour temperature of black, grey and white are all low. There were plenty of surprises to follow, possibly the subject of a separate article, but let’s stick with the colours.
I was teaching some French students recently at The London College of Communication. We were discussing the importance of having an art director who paints as well as directs. This got us on to the subject of cars. I asked them, “What colour is a fast car?”
A sports car is red because Ferrari made it so.
All nineteen said, “Red!”
I held up a photo of a red Ferrari 458.
“Yes!” they hollered. “That’s a fast car!”
And that, of course, is why you should judge a book by its cover. Any half-capable art director will put in all the cultural clues needed by a potential purchaser to judge if the book she holds is what she’ll enjoy reading.
So why had this digital agency got some key cultural signposts so badly wrong?
It turned out that nobody seemed to talk to each other. They went into work, booted up their computer, plugged in their earphones, ate sandwiches at their work station, went home and disappeared.
I think this was a failure of both leadership and management. The showreel looked lovely, but had no substance. I had no idea what was the point of view was which the agency hoped would win it new business.
The meaning of colours is a tiny part of semiotics.
Greg Rowland, who runs Greg Rowland Semiotics, says, “Semiotics is about understanding how the world of culture works. By analysing symbolism across brands, products, design, communications and popular culture we can uncover amazing new insights.”
I have found this to be very true. For example, I pitched for Sheridans a little while ago. We used Ginny Valentine and
Sheridans, a semiotic liqueur full of cultural tension
her partner, Monty, to look at what the contrasting black and white liquids might mean to purchasers. As we discussed it, Ginny said, “It reminds me of the chess game between Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair – tremendous tension.”
So, we took that observation, turned it into a pitch and an advertising idea, showed it to IDV, now Diageo, and Tony Scouller more or less gave us the business on the spot.
Semiotics covers all those areas which we mutually understand but never really need to discuss. In the UK, recent immigration has stretched this thin in some cases, but not maliciously. I recently discovered in a talk at the Jubilee School in Hackney to 5-6 year olds, most of whom are recent arrivals from Turkey and Africa, that they do not think of the Luftwaffe when the word bomb is used. They think of car and vest bombs, which explains their confusion as my ex-WW2 Royal Canadian Airforce mother, Myra, attempted to describe what the Blitz in London was like. The children were imagining old VW Beetles, stuffed full of TNT, being pushed out of the rear of Dornier 17s at night.
Finally, semiotics really do matter when it comes to being assessed by someone else.
No matter how hard we try to be fair when we’re interviewing job candidates, we know within thirty seconds if we’re going to get along with the applicant. You can start an interview as a candidate well and end it badly, but you cannot start it badly and end it well.
Chaps: shower, shave, brush your teeth, don’t eat garlic or baked beans the previous evening, wear clean shoes, be on time, get your girlfriend to tie a tie around your neck, and look interested.
Girls: I don’t need to tell you what to do, but do bear in mind that many interviewers now are older women. I have recently seen this go hideously wrong.
If you want to know more about semiotics, and want to boost your new business hit rate, click on the links below, or send me a comment, and I’ll get in touch.
Finally, many thanks to Roger Morris for suggesting this topic. He had looked at the new lay out and colour of this blog, and had wondered what the transition from green to red might mean to the blog’s readership. If there’s enough interest in the topic, we’ll take it further in a longer and more thorough post soon. If you have observations of your own about semiotics, please post a comment. I’m also interested in guest blogs on the subject.
An important topic. Thanks. I’ve recommended your blog to my son, Christian Klawitter, who is the major force at Bright Design in Marina Del Rey, CA.
John, Many thanks for this. The biggest event recently in the UK was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. On the Monday, my wife, two friends and I walked up Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath, where there was a gaggle of spectators, probably no more than seventy-five, and watched the flypast. Everyone else was in The Mall. For us, the flypast was about three miles away, and it included four Spitfires, one Hurricane and a Lancaster. We could hear them better than see them. The cloud base was 500 feet at best. The sky was chucking down the rain. As we turned to go home, water dripping from our noses, we felt Parliament Hill begin to shake. The six aircrafts’ combined nine Merlins drowned out conversation as they thundered over Parliament Hill at 300 feet, using the hill as a waypoint for RAF Duxford. We all stopped and watched them go. I don’t cry easily, being British and having been to a boy’s boarding school or two, but this hit me. I looked at everyone else, and, for everyone, tears were coursing down their cheeks as well. Why? Because these are iconic aircraft with meanings deeply embedded in them, all of which we completely understand as a nation. The myths of the Second World War are kept alive by these aircraft, and will do so long after all who were alive during WW2 are dead, just as HMS Victory does in a dry-dock in Portsmouth. Napoleon posed the same threat to us. When you ask kids in Portsmouth who poses the biggest threat to the UK, they always say the same thing: “The French!” Hmm, they might be right. Later, I rang my Mum, ex WW2 RCAF. She asked, “Did you see the Lancaster? It made me cry.” She wasn’t the only one. And that is semiotics.
Peace, love and brown rice, Steve
I have similar feelings when the last of the B25 Mitchell bombers roar by overhead at the airshows here in the West San Fernando Valley. They were built in Burbank, 19 miles east of here. As a young boy on a farm in Northern Illinois, flocks of them would fly overhead, stopping off in Chicago on their way across the Atlantic to help in WWII. A distinctive, very loud, rattly even, sound of the twin engines. I’ll run outside from my studio, to catch a glimpse of that or any other warplane from those days of yore.
Interesting product Sheridans. Steve has simplified the story but it is substance true. The brand was invented in house by an Irishman but the technical development, liquid(s) and packaging was constructed in what was then Diageos NPD unit. It got lost in the shuffle when the merger came with Guinness. It was too small to warrant attention. Is every brand not small at the start?
The upside is that the brand remains undamaged
How about somebody offering to buy it?
Tony, Good to hear from you. Thanks for the comment. How are you? It’s over a year since I last saw you. Steve
I have very fond memories of working on Sheridan’s in the mid-90s, with Ginny and Monty (much-missed since their passing.) I loved the product experience and symbolism. But it had a steep hill to climb.
The problem with the sweet & creamy product is that there’s massive cultural resistance to changing use occasions and associations around what we might term ‘alcoholic confectionary.’ ‘Proper’ drinks are supposed to have a more complex, and even slightly challenging, taste experience. Sheridan’s made no such demands. It was easy….very easy….and, for me, that’s where the appeal lay. I fondly remember trying to sell Ginny the idea that there was a possible positioning — ironic yet functional — around ‘The Hellraiser’. It was inspired by Keith Moon, who was a proselytiser for Brandy Alexander cocktails, calling them ‘milk shakes’ and recommending them on the basis of their ease and smoothness, and specific lack of alcoholic flavour. John Lennon took his advice and went on to fuel his infamous three month ‘lost weekend’ in 1973 with a steady stream of BAs.
Of course we couldn’t be as explicit as this, but I always felt that this kind of drink was a mark of the supremely confident hedonist, not out to impress, and devising new forms of pleasure and use from products in spite and because of their seemingly innocuous and displaced cultural associations.
It was a long shot, and I was guilty of basing a strategy on an idealised version of my 26-year-old self, who combined semiotic work with touring with a funk band. I wasn’t adverse to a bit of hedonism myself.
The coda to the Sheridan’s project came in a duty free hall, after a short European tour. A rather attractive young woman, glamorous in an Upper Essex style, reached for a bottle of Sheridan’s. Noting my proximity she looked slightly ashamed and felt the need to justify her purchase:
“I know it’s a tart’s drink…but I like it!” (Followed by a Barbara Windsor giggle.)
Now there’s a pretty much perfect brand essence, full of tension, desire, guilt and hedonism — all fighting on the dance floor.
As they say, out of the mouth of (Essex) babes comes truth.