What makes a semiotician tick? SEMIOVOX’s Josh Glenn has invited his fellow practitioners in the field of commercial semiotics, from around the world, to answer a few revealing questions.

Paris…

SEMIOVOX

When you were a child/teen, how did your future fascination with symbols, cultural patterns, interpreting “texts,” and getting beneath the surface of daily life manifest itself?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

I lived in the countryside, so I was often bored — especially in winter. I drew a lot to keep myself occupied. I invented worlds, towns, houses and families to tell stories.

When I was little, I thought that all families were more or less the same. Then one day, a nasty remark from a classmate about the colour of my father’s skin (he’s from Reunion Island) made me see this family in a different light. I began to scrutinise our lives and those of others to identify what might make us different: those details that come from another culture. All this shaped my passion for cultural, social, family, personal and… brand identities.

Later, I wanted to work in film or theatre scenography. My fascination with codes and cultural patterns was essentially directed towards assembling elements that allowed me to travel through my projects, express creative intentions, and create diverse realities.

SEMIOVOX

Describe your first encounter(s) with the theory and practice of semiotics.

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

After years of working as an artistic director in a large company, I felt the need to be able to better defend my creative intuitions — so as to leave less room for individual “likes and dislikes” during meetings. So I took part in a course on analysing advertising images. It was fascinating to decode these symbols, the re-actualisation of myths, to reveal the structure of meaning.

A few years later, I left my company and enrolled in a master’s degree in communication semiology at Paris La Sorbonne. I met [French semiologist] Valérie Brunetière and discovered the writings of Roland Barthes, Greimas, Jean-Marie Floch and so many others, as well as [French semiologist] Anne-Marie Houdebine’s approach to the semiology of cues (which I’ve tried out several times in my professional practice, even though systemic analysis has proven difficult to sell financially to clients). I also met [French ethnologist and linguist] Jean-Didier Urbain, an exceptional professor who taught us cultural anthropology.

I felt at home with semiotics, because I could finally ask the questions I’d always wanted to ask. And I was surrounded by people who were also fascinated by the same questions.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

Having studied semiotics, I immediately wanted to apply it professionally. But people came to me to design the expression of a brand, not for semiotics. So for a long time I secretly included semiotic analysis in my clients’ projects without really talking about it!

Over time, my practice has evolved towards using the design approach for more strategic and complex projects such as data commons, which require both a highly pragmatic approach to the various possible models of cooperation and a symbolic (and speculative) approach to the context. In the immersion phase associated with any design process, I include a cultural approach whenever possible, with elements of meaning analysis. This is an important element in the decision-making context.

I also do a lot of work for the social economy in France, a sector where marketing and branding are often perceived as manipulation, as practices that run against the values of the sector. It used to be said that the reality of the products and services of SSE structures are the best-kept secrets, because they are rarely promoted beyond a very restricted perimeter! Fortunately, things are changing. Today, brands rooted in fair and sustainable development are exploring new areas of expression to affirm their roots, whether in ethical fashion, engaged tech or sustainable food. This sector, which didn’t expect me to use traditional marketing methods, enabled me to develop and sell my semiotic work. Today, it’s a veritable laboratory for experimentation for both design and semiotics.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

• The semiotician questions his or her own culture, which implies having a good ability to ‘decentre’ in order to observe. You have to be both an actor and an observer.
• Curiosity is a driving force for the semiotician. Interpretation requires a good knowledge of a wide range of fields.
• Language skills are important — particularly when when it comes to naming.

SEMIOVOX

What three books about semiotics have you found the most useful and enlightening in your own work?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

• Jean-Marie Floch’s Sémiotique, marketing et communication: Sous les signes, les stratégies. Floch’s work was an invaluable guide when I started practising semiotics. Floch’s analysis of metro passengers remains a memorable work in the sense that the analysis of meaning integrated objects and practices. The other aspect that has been very useful to me is the ‘semiotic square’ of consumption values. I draw a lot of inspiration from this work in my analysis of narratives, particularly thanks to Andrea Semprini’s book, Le marketing de la marque, which articulates both Floch’s values of consumption and Greimas’s generative path of meaning.
• Jean Baudrillard’s Seduction — for his approach to the (symbolic) feminine-masculine, production-seduction, which still makes me think. At first, the feminist in me was irritated by Baudrillard’s ideas. But I’m still thinking about it. When I watched the film Barbie, Baudrillard was on my mind…
• Georges Perec’s Infra-ordinary — because the first words of the book deal with the media event as an ordinary fact and the ‘ordinary’ as a phenomenon that needs to be questioned.

SEMIOVOX

When someone asks you to describe what you do, what is your “elevator pitch”? How do you persuade a skeptical client to take a chance on using this tool?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

It depends on the type of project. More often than not, I tell them that while they pay a lot of attention (and budget) to tangible things, in reality we know that the symbolic part is more deeply rooted — and so I suggest a way for them to make it as tangible as possible to position themselves or make decisions on this aspect. Then I take more concrete examples: I show them previous analyses, so that they can project themselves into the result.

SEMIOVOX

What specific sorts of semiotics-driven projects do you find to be the most enjoyable and rewarding?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

I’ve done a lot of bricolage (in Lévi-Strauss’s sense of the term) between semiotics and design, in search of the best way to valorise semiotics in my design projects. Because the methods that I’d learned were very empirical and difficult to apply for my clients, I could only start working for semiotics-driven projects once I turned towards anglophone publications and started communicating with commercial semioticians from other countries. Over the last few years, I’ve felt the need for this kind of international collaboration and I’ve started to position myself on cultural analyses for international agencies. So today, one type of semiotics-driven project that motivates me is cultural insight projects carried out in multiple countries. 

I’ve done a lot of work on tech and food, but I find it very stimulating to tackle new categories.

Ten years after my first encounter with semiotics, the question for me is less whether I’m more of a semiotician than a designer, or vice versa, than how to combine my expertise in these two domains to add value to a project. I like to alternate between purely semiotic analysis projects and projects where semiotics is an integral part of the design process. I’m also interested in the contribution of semiotics to innovation and transformation projects, including speculative or critical design.

SEMIOVOX

What frustrates you about how semiotics is practiced and/or perceived, right now?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

For a long time I’ve been frustrated by the way in which semiotics applied to marketing and branding has been insufficiently valued in France. Most of the time, when I say the word semiotics, I still have to explain what it’s all about. It is too often perceived as a very intellectual and intangible discipline in the environments where I work, which are very pragmatic and quantitative.

Also, I’m sometimes frustrated that it’s difficult to broaden the scope of semiotics beyond branding and marketing. With the challenges of sustainable and fair development, more and more decision-makers are aware of the need to evolve our systems of representation, our narratives and, more broadly, to design business trajectories that make sense for their stakeholders. They need to include a cultural approach to global transformation. If the practice of design has been able to evolve from product design to the designer’s contribution to the decision-making process, can’t semiotics extend beyond branding and marketing?

SEMIOVOX

Peirce or Saussure?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

Saussure, because that’s where it all started for me. That said, I’ve always more interested in Greimas and [French semiologist Jacques] Fontanille than in Saussure’s work itself.

SEMIOVOX

What advice would you give to a young person interested in this sort of work?

ALEXANDRA ROBERT

• Find a mentor 😉 I really missed it and sometimes still do.
• Beyond that idea, I would start by sitting down in a café, disconnecting your phone and looking around at the way people put themselves into stories, or simply browsing through a magazine they’ve bought at random. Or, come to Semiofest sessions.

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