Decoding the Cultural Foundational Framework, empowering strategy, design and innovation
At the intersection of Culture, Consumer and Change.
As a Semiotician, I tap into the underlying cultural forces that makes us operate the way we do. Decoding the cultural context and communication reveals more than what the individual can.
It helps navigate cultural shifts, anchor in the local cultural and provides better connect with the future possibilities.
The approach is foundational – taps into emergent trends, empowering strategy and innovation.
The point of departure for semiotics is Culture
The world we live in is taken-for- granted, making culture invisible. Yet culture shapes and influences us subconsciously – making us operate the way we do and who we are. We cannot see or articulate this influence consciously.
Semiotics, the science of decoding culture, enables deeper consumer understanding -going beyond the obvious. It decodes the meaning created in the consumer’s mind by the cultural context. The primary research methodologies taps into the conscious response of the people while semiotics delves at the subconscious impact of culture.
Cultural-understanding and its application cannot be left to chance or to intuition.
Creating value
Brands act as cultural agents, linking their value system with emergent cultural meanings. People purchase brands to be associated with these stories, and enhance their own cultural identities.
Cultural decoding empowers brands and business at three levels:
1. Inspirational
Opens new opportunities for the brand by tapping into future possibilities.
The power of cultural decoding lies in tracking cultural shifts influencing consumer behaviour.
2. Strategic
Anchors the brand in the changing cultural context. Fuels creativity. Improves global-local brand strategy.
Cultural awareness allows global brand to be anchored in the local culture, and ensures cross- cultural harmonization.
3. Diagnostic
Increases communication effectiveness by diagnosing how meaning is conveyed, and whether there is any dissonance?
Fuels creativity and innovation by providing foundational framework.
Areas of Impact: Global-Local Brand Strategy, New Product Development, Brand/ Communication Strategy, Innovation Platforms, Design and Visual Identity
Cultural decoding approach is foundational and futurist
Scientific, objective and rigorous: Semiotics is based on an in-depth immersion in the cultural context. Its an scientific and rigorous methodology, analysing a large base of cultural data.
The value edge lies in the core delivery of the Foundational Culture Framework, empowering the strategic and creative process. Thereby anchoring ideas to the cultural context that it belongs.
1. WE DO NOT TALK TO PEOPLE
Semiotics taps into the source and decodes the entire communication context.
2. SIGN AND SYMBOLS
Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols, and the way consumers interacts with culture, to create meaning of things
3.CONTEXT OVER-RULES TEXT
Everything conveys a message. Nothing is arbitrary -even the absence. Sign is anything that means something to someone.
Tracks socio-cultural shifts- tapping into possibilities before they become obvious
The lens of semiotics is like an X-ray, revealing why people are doing and thinking the way they are. We do not interview people but use culture as the input data.
My Cultural Quest. I have applied the semiotics tool across domains of business, art and humanity to get a deeper understanding of collective impact on individual behaviour.