What makes modern Britain laugh? How semiotics helped the BBC bridge the Humor Gap

In 2018, BBC Marketing and Audiences approached semiotic agencies with a challenging brief. They wanted to know the following: What makes modern Britain laugh? The BBC's younger audiences have been steadily drifting to other platforms and broadcasters to satisfy their need for "funny stuff." Brands that successfully leverage humor really resonate with this new modern mainstream audience, for example, Netflix, BuzzFeed, YouTube, Snapchat, and so on.

Introduction

Semiotic thinking has traditionally been seen as a tool of brand strategy and communication by examination of the category or cultural codes that surround a brand. However, increasingly, media owners are turning to semiotics to inform their programming and content management and to inform commissioning too. The BBC Marketing and Audiences team has been an assiduous user of semiotics for some time. Semiotic agencies appointed onto its research framework roster are there to offer the deep qualitative insights the Corporation needs. These projects range in their scope from analyzing prospective channel idents for BBC2 and assessing imagery attached to...

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