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.

Shanghai / Mexico City…

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?

FRANCISCO HAUSS

My mother is an artist and so is my brother; I grew up in an environment surrounded by art. I was fascinated by how art can be such ambiguous form of language — meant to break conventions, to create an anomaly in the code, to hack cultural trends and create new discursive and visual possibilities. I used to open art books to a random page, and try to puzzle out the meaning of the art work I’d find. Being “in-between” not understanding, on the one hand, and finding coherent associations, on the other, is a very pleasant feeling that art can deliver. It feels like traveling, disconnecting from what you have known so far. The art experience is transformative liminality that allows new possibilities of reality to come into play.

As market researchers and brand strategists, we aim to find well-structured visual codes, behavioral patterns, and coherent shifts. But the tautological, ambiguous, rule-less realm of art is usually more keen to break codes and structures — and to shake meaning conventions. These two oppositional mechanisms of meaning both offer great tools for exploring culture deeply.

SEMIOVOX

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

FRANCISCO HAUSS

My father influenced me to believe that [the Austrian art historian] Ernst Gombrich’s iconographic and iconological way of analyzing artworks [most notably via his 195 book The Story of Art] was the best method. Another window to semiotics was opened for me by my first encounter with Baudrillard — his book Simulacra and Simulation.

At university, I’d study semiotics in a more structured, academic manner.

SEMIOVOX

How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?

FRANCISCO HAUSS

After moving to Shanghai to study Mandarin, I would often visit the Pantocrator Gallery in the M50 art district. A semiotician and I often attended the same openings, and we’d discuss the art, Chinese culture, and semiotics. Eventually he encouraged me to apply for a job at Added Value’s Shanghai office, where I’d work for three years. I found applied semiotics fascinating — I liked it as much as I liked art.

Today I’m an independent consultant, mostly working for the Chinese, Asia region, and Mexican markets. I work with brilliant people around the globe and try to keep my passion for commercial semiotics forever fresh.

SEMIOVOX

What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?

FRANCISCO HAUSS

Critical thinking, an analytical eye, creativity, aesthetic feeling, emotional sensitivity, and conceptual thinking.

SEMIOVOX

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

FRANCISCO HAUSS

• Jesper Hoffmeyer’s Signs of Meaning in the Universe. It opened for me a brand-new perspective on how to amplify the semiotic view towards a broader spectrum of life relationships and behaviors. The processes of meaning and communication are not exclusive to human beings; they are the status quo of life itself.
• [Mexican-American artist and philosopher] Manuel Delanda’s A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History explores how meaning and behaviors travel within a dynamic system. It taps into historical processes anchored in linguistic, urban, and genetic examples.
• Simulacra and Simulation, which I mentioned before as an early influence. Baudrillard’s poetic and radical writing style make his ideas and theories really pleasant for me to read. 

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?

FRANCISCO HAUSS

When it’s not for work, I enjoy letting this question lead to a conversation that flows in unexpected directions.

For clients, I usually address specific examples related to their brand, category, specialty — or I might address needs that the client has articulated. If the client is already using research methodologies — like QL [Qualitative Longitudinal research], ethnographic research, or expert interviews — I might point out how semiotics can help them link the learnings from these tools in a wider picture of market research.

SEMIOVOX

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

FRANCISCO HAUSS

I love developing multichannel positioning platforms. Especially when they have multisensory implications — for instance, aligning visual universes, narratives and packaging design with aromas, taste descriptions and product formulas in a single-minded positioning.

I also find it particularly rewarding to trace regional strategies and nuances across global markets, and to engage in innovation projects where creativity and imagination plays a more active role.

SEMIOVOX

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

FRANCISCO HAUSS

Semiotics is a great tool for integrating reports generated by other research methodologies — and this kind of integration work is both pleasant and important. However, too often clients only use semiotics as an adjunct to other research methodologies. I’d like to see semiotics serve as the core to more projects.

SEMIOVOX

Peirce or Saussure?

FRANCISCO HAUSS

Saussure’s dichotomic relations and binary oppositions are quite useful in commercial semiotics. But being a keen enthusiast of biosemiotics, I would choose Peirce. His trichotomic models are more dynamic and wide; they make me feel semiotics is something that can be applied to all living beings and not exclusively to humans.

For instance, the concept of index implies the idea of experience, movement, and life happening. It approaches the idea of meaning from a primal source… one that animals use too — e.g., by interpreting animal tracks.

Emancipating through meaning within culture, as a human being, is good. But emancipating through meaning within nature, as a living being, is better.

SEMIOVOX

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

FRANCISCO HAUSS

Let the passion drive your professional development. Keep feeding-in renewed motivation and curiosity to what you do. Each project is an opportunity to learn and grow, so use it to the fullest.

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