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?

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

I was quite an imaginative and curious child. I remember seeing the tiniest details that others did not usually pay attention to: colours, shapes, the way people behaved, an unusual outfit, etc. I always tried to find an explanation and an interpretation for these. Developing the ability not merely to see but to observe is an essential skill for a semiotician.

When I was a teen, I used to stroll through art museums and especially the Louvre as I was living in Paris. At about 17 years old, I took a master class with an art historian at the Louvre and it was a revelation. The way he analyzed a piece of art and the way he interpreted each detail was just fascinating for me. I realized I wanted to do something along these lines but I did not know exactly what….

SEMIOVOX

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

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

I earned a Master’s in Semiotics at the Université Paris Cité in 2013 — this was after 10 years of work experience as a junior product manager for Clarins and St Gobain, and as a brand strategist for the branding consulting agency of the TBWA group. As a brand strategist, I discovered semiotics through books and I immediately understood how a semiotic approach could add value to a brand analysis. In 2013, I’d just had my second child, so I could benefit from a parental leave for several months. I decided to use it and study semiotics. At first, I was surprised by how theoretical it was — I did not understand how it could be easily commercially translated. But thanks to excellent teachers, I eventually discovered that semiotics is actually very hands-on and can be invaluable in business and marketing.

I was attracted by the power of semiotics to decode an image, an ad, or a brand identity — and how these phenomena are related to myths, beliefs, and the culture around us. With semiotics, I discovered a new way of thinking and analyzing, one that goes much more into detail than what you can learn in business school.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

Two years after I earned my Master’s, I was hired by Kantar as a semiotician in Johannesburg. I learned everything on the job — from the methodology to cultural insights (in a different culture than mine!), up to how to talk about semiotics with clients. I learned how to analyze cultural shifts, how to use patterns, and how to identify business opportunities in a different way than I’d learned years before in business school.

I was trained in France with a very academic perspective, but I ended up practicing semiotics in an English-speaking country where semiotics and cultural insights are much more tangible and business-oriented. In my practice I’ve closed the gap between these approaches — because I use semiotics to answer complex branding issues such as brand repositioning, brand extension, brand revamping, etc.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

You need to be creative but also very logical and rigorous. You need to think creatively to find new solutions, to see things in a creative way with a fresh eye… but at the same time you need to be very rigorous in your analysis — in order to be credible.

A good semiotician also needs to stay curious and unbiased whatever the context, the client, or the type of project. You need to keep your eyes wide open at all times and be able to make connections and links between unrelated things. For that, you need to cultivate a “helicopter” view on things, concepts, and problems.

SEMIOVOX

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

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

• Mythologies by Roland Barthes. I like to reread it as often as I can. It’s a very powerful book that speaks to all of us, and its insights remain relevant even though it was written in the ’50s. Barthes succeeds in revealing deep French cultural patterns that are still alive in contemporary France.
• How Brands Become Icons by Douglas B. Holt. For me, this is the bible for cultural insights. Based on very interesting case studies, Holt delivers specific methodological tools to analyze cultural insights and cultural shifts. I think that all practitioners of cultural insights or semiotics should read it.
• Visual Intelligence by Amy E. Herman. Although not directly linked to semiotics, it’s a very useful book to learn how to observe. Herman is an art historian who offers useful tips on how to analyze all sorts of things, not only art. After this book, you’ll automatically observe and think like a semiotician.

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?

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

If the person knows a bit of marketing and consumer research, I introduce myself as a cultural insight specialist. I explain how cultural insight is a powerful and complementary tool to classical consumer research methodologies — one that helps to uncover the “why” beneath consumer behaviours, complementary to the “what” uncovered by traditional focus groups.

If the person is not familiar with marketing or consumer research, I simply introduce myself as a brand strategist whose job is to help brands become more meaningful to consumers. I seldom use the word “semiotics,” which seems to frighten people…

SEMIOVOX

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

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

I really appreciate working on multi-country projects for which semioticians from different parts of the world work together to unpack the meaning of a concept for a brand. For example, I recently had to unpack what “culinary” means — this was for a global snacking brand. You can imagine how complex this undertaking was in French culture; “culinary” is very polysemic here in France!

I also like to conduct brand audits for which you have to dig into the brand’s history and heritage through a consistent corpus — made of various documents such as brand communications, internal documents, interviews with employees, etc. In this type of project, I particularly like to show clients how semiotics is a powerful tool to bridge the past, the present, and the future. It not only offers a historical perspective to a brand, but helps us devise a clear strategy for the future.

SEMIOVOX

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

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

Semiotics is not yet well understood by marketing people, especially in France. I realized while working abroad how often semiotics was used in marketing strategy in other countries. In France, semiotics is still considered an academic field, not sufficiently business-oriented. The challenge for us French semioticians is to prove that semiotics is a super-powerful strategic tool for brands!

The word “semiotics” frightens people — even marketing and research professionals. English-speaking people often use “cultural insights” instead of “semiotics” and maybe here in France we should come together and agree on a new word or phrase to use going forward.

SEMIOVOX

Peirce or Saussure?

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

In France, semiotics is taught through the lens of linguistics and of course, Saussure is the main reference. I did discover Peirce during my studies, but I feel closer to Saussure. Also, I’m half Swiss — so Saussure, definitely. 😊

SEMIOVOX

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

DORA JURD DE GIRANCOURT

• Train your eye. Anyone can become a good semiotician, but only if you train yourself to observe things specifically — and make links between ideas, concepts, trends, objects.
• Be analytic and rigorous. Semiotics is a powerful method to observe and find patterns in a brand, in an ecosystem, and more broadly, in a culture. In your recommendations to clients, you need to be very serious and analytic and always show several pieces of cultural evidence.

MAKING SENSE series: MARTHA ARANGO (Sweden) | MACIEJ BIEDZIŃSKI (Poland) | BECKS COLLINS (England) | WHITNEY DUNLAP-FOWLER (USA) | IVÁN ISLAS (Mexico) | WILLIAM LIU (China) | SÓNIA MARQUES (Portugal) | CHIRAG MEDIRATTA (India / Canada) | SERDAR PAKTIN (Turkey / England) | MARIA PAPANTHYMOU (Greece / Russia) | XIMENA TOBI (Argentina) | & many more.

Also see these series: COVID CODES | SEMIO OBJECTS | MAKING SENSE | COLOR CODEX