Enchantment: Using semiotics to understand the magic of branding

This paper looks at how magic can be harnessed by a brand by using semiotics. Lessons are taken from the people's award winner at the 2009 National Gallery BP Portrait Award, Imagine, by Jose Luis Corella, which demonstrates the importance of surprising people and breaking conventions.

Enchantment: Using semiotics to understand the magic of branding

Nick GadsbyLawes Consulting

INTRODUCTION

The words 'enchantment' and 'magic' are not the kinds of words we encounter often in marketing and branding so I will begin this paper by explaining why this subject matter needs to be elucidated and why semiotics is the method most appropriate to do this.

For the majority of us magic means one, or both, of two things – either it's something we associate with pre-modern belief systems that includes superstition, divine entities, spirits and so forth or it refers to the kind of illusions or...

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