Aesthetics and the Brand
Jonathan E. Schroeder
Professor of Marketing
University of Exeter
General Research Program
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How do images strategically communicate?
How do images circulate in consumer culture?
How do people understand advertising images?
How do images relate to brand meaning?
What does the World Wide Web mean for visual
consumption?
• What are some ethical and social implications for
the reliance on images in marketing
communication?
Aesthetic Flows between Culture
and Commerce
Overview of Presentation
I Introduction to a visual approach to marketing
and consumer research
II Research example I: “Aesthetics in the
financial sector”
III Research example II: “Artist, Brands, and
Consumption”
IV Counterarguments to the visual approach
V Conclusions
Multi-level Research Approach
• Form: the role of images in the market
• Function: what images do –
communication, signification, branding,
strategy, Web visuals, identity
• Meaning: aesthetics, semiotics, cultural
analysis, myths, tools for research and
understanding
Image Economics
• Use Value
• Exchange Value
• Image Value (for giving an
appearance, aestheticization, in
both exchange and use)
Tools for Visual Analysis
• Humanities provide theoretical tools to
understand image genres, content, and
narrative
• Social science affords methods for
discussing context, effects, and strategic
implications.
• Visual representations in marketing
communication can be considered sociopolitical artifacts – creating meaning within
the circuit of culture beyond strategic
intention, invoking a range of issues
formerly reserved for the political sphere
and widely circulating information about
the social world.
Brands
• Managing brands successfully mandates
managing the brand’s meaning in the
marketplace – the brand image. Yet, the
brand meaning is not wholly derived from
the market. Culture, aesthetics, and history
interact to inject brands into the global flow
of images.
Architectural Expression in the
Electronic Age
A Typical Bank
Buildings and Brands
Although space and time are transfigured within the
information based electronic world of contemporary
commerce, classical architecture remains a viable method
for communicating consumer values.
In a visual genealogy of contemporary marketing
communication and branding efforts, this project analyzed
banking Websites, corporate reports, and marketing
communication to reveal the staying power of classicism
for transmitting certain key values about banks and
building brand images for global financial institutions.
Research Assumptions
1) Architecture is a rhetoric.
That is, built form constitutes a system of
representation and signifying practices.
Buildings mean something. Form persuades.
Architectural form refers to the general style of a
building—a castle, a church, or a strip mall, for
example. Architecture is a complex signifying
system encompassing art, technology, industry,
and investment that represents ideals, goals, and
values.
Classicism: a strategic style
2) Classicism is a
particularly
persuasive
architectural style.
Classical architecture
has its roots in
antiquity, in the worlds
of ancient Greece and
Rome, in the temple
architecture of the
Greeks and in the
military and civil
architecture of the
Romans.
Appropriating Architectural
Expression
3) Financial institutions, particularly in the West
appropriated architectural expression for
strategic reasons:
“banks adopted the canons of classical architecture
as appropriate forms to house their functions, the
less tangible (psychological) attributes of strength,
security, and stability characterize them as a
distinguishable building type” (Chambers, 1985,
p. 20).
Architecture’s Expressive Power
A typical bank expressed
“by means of its bulk, its bronze doors, and
its barred windows, that your money was
safe; it also said, since it had a façade of a
Greek temple, that money was holy”
(Barnet, 1997, p. 54).
A bank’s appearance should convey an impression
that reflects the institution’s character by its air of
stability, dignity, and security.
Architectural Communication
Thus, the less tangible attributes of a
bank—its image—can be communicated
through architectural form.
• Stability (we’ve been around for awhile)
• Security (we’re safe and will protect you)
• Strength (we’re financially sound)
Contemporary Issues
4) The strategic fit between architecture and
banking is under strain in the virtual world of
electronic, online, and web-based banking.
A key element of understanding images is to see
how physical forms change into abstracted, visual
forms, how materiality transforms into electronic
imagery, how the past signifies, and how
information technology harnesses the global flow
of images for strategic communication.
Financial needs today
• Speed and innovation- how to communicate
these emergent consumer attributes - while
maintaining values of stability, strength, and
security?
Contemporary Architectural
Communication
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Websites
Marketing Communications
Corporate Reports
ATM graphics and design
Currency
Today’s Bank
Marketing Images
Corporate Communications
Architectural Referents: Euro
Building Brands
• I found evidence of the continuing significance of
classical architecture—it remains to symbolize
banking’s connection with the past by tapping into
classicism as a powerful referent system.
• Although the premises of banking have changed,
the promises of the banking industry have not.
• Contributes to understanding the cultural codes of
branding.
Arts, Brands and Consumption
• Illustrative
Case:
Andy
Warhol
• The intellectual, disciplinary, and semiotic
separation of art and business has obscured
the potential of studying the art market as
the exemplar of image-based branding.
• For it is art that is based on images, value,
and identity above all other sectors of the
market.
• Greater awareness of the connections
between the traditions and conventions of
visual art and the production and
consumption of images leads to enhanced
ability to understand branding as a
representational system and signifying
practice.
• Successful artists can be thought of as
brand managers, actively engaged in
developing, nurturing, and promoting
themselves as recognizable "products" in
the competitive cultural sphere.
Andy Warhol
• Warhol provides a stunning example of
artist as brand – he was extremely articulate
about his ambition to become famous, “like
a brand” – and his work reflectively
comments on brands and consumer culture.
Warhol’s contributions to branding are many,
and he remains a hot brand fifteen years
after his untimely death.
Andy Warhol
• b. Andrew Warhola,
Pittsburgh
• Achieved great success as
Commercial Illustrator,
New York City 1950s
• Worldwide fame as artist,
filmmaker, celebrity 1960s
• Died in 1987, left fortune
of around $400 million
• Andy Warhol Museum,
Pittsburgh 1994 -
Warhol on his work
• “I love America and these are some
comments on it. The image is a statement
of the symbols of the harsh impersonal
products and brash materialistic objects on
which America is built today. It is a
projection of everything that can be bought
and sold, the practical but important
symbols that sustain us.” (1985)
Warhol on brands
• ”A coke is a coke.
You can’t buy a better coke.”
Warhol’s contributions
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Brands and Brand Equity
Clothing, Fashion, and Beauty
Imagery
Packaging
Consumer Self-concept
Advertising Age obituary
• “His work pointed out the similarities
between mass produced goods–soup,
cleaners, celebrities, news ‘events’–in a way
that made clearer how images are
manufactured. In this pop culture, Andy
Warhol saw America. Through him,
America saw itself” (Skenazy 1987)
Barbara Kruger
• Perhaps best known for her photomontage
I shop therefore I am, Kruger's
combinations of text and found images
address a host of representational issues
relevant to branding, consumption, and
identity. Her images resonate with
marketing scholarship on the critical
interaction between consumption and
identity.
Thomas Kinkade
• America’s most
successful artist:
• $300 million per year
• NYSE listing
• Galleries, products,
real estate, and oh yes,
art.
Branding the Artist
• Many contemporary artists utilize brands in
their work, commenting, criticizing, and
creatively interrogating the branding
concept and its role in consumer culture.
• Successful artists may be seen as twin
engines of branding knowledge – both as
consummate image managers, and as
managers of their own brand – the artist.
Art & Insight
• Typical turns toward art, artists, aesthetics –
Innovation Creativity Inspiration
• But why not –
Branding, Brand Management, Networking,
Visualization, Value, Image Management
• How do artists manage images? What can
brand researchers learn from theories of
visual representation?
Wisdom from the Workshop
1) Interconnections between art, brands and
culture
2) Self-reflexivity of brands
3) Brand criticism
Art, Brands and Culture
• Artists appropriate brands and commercial
symbols in their art – brands provide visual
raw material.
Art, Brands and Culture
• Second, the art market itself is greatly
concerned with brands – well known global
brands like Picasso, Van Gogh, Rembrandt,
and Caravaggio. Perhaps in no other
market is the relationship between name
recognition, value, and branding so clear.
Art, Brands and Culture
• Third, artists create visual brands via their
work – their style or look. At times, this
style directly derives from the branded
world, in Andy Warhol’s case, for example.
Moreover, the logic of advertising informs
artistic production -- Barbara Kruger’s work
formally resembles advertising. Cindy
Sherman uses the film and film stills.
Art, Brands and Culture
• Finally, artist’s use of branding helps
articulate cultural meanings and
associations that constitute brands.
Reflexive Brands
• Brands interact with, ‘talk to’, and exist
among, other brands
• Artists often actively animate brand
reflexivity by yanking brands out of the
marketing context and into the gallery, often
identifying and highlighting the essence of
the brand.
Reflexive Brands
• Just as often artists appropriate existing
links between brand images, brand names,
and marketing campaigns.
• However, artistic use of brand names almost
always runs counter to that expected or
intended by brand managers, and therein
lies its capacity for innovative insight.
Brand Critique
• Artists like Warhol, Kruger, and Sherman do
provide cogent critiques of consumer culture.
• They point out the dehumanizing process of
commodification, the sameness of the branded
environment, and the debilitating effects of
celebrity and its quest.
• However, their works sit comfortably within a
celebratory, liberatory mode of consumption, too.
Counter-arguments to
visual consumption
• Currently, there seem to be four distinct and
often contradictory propositions that
concern visual consumption.
– The Savvy Consumer
– Advertising is dead
– The Clueless Consumer
– Zapping
Transparency
• Do consumers enjoy high levels of visual
literacy—are they successful semioticians
of the image economy who understand how
images work? This is the savvy consumer,
for whom marketing is transparent. In other
words, everyone knows ads are designed to
sell things.
The Savvy Consumer
• One might think that the ascendancy of
visual images would lead to unprecedented
levels of visual literacy; that consumers
living in an image-based world might
become picture savvy, accomplished
semioticians able to decode and decipher
images at will.
We’re not fooled
• One colleague argues that postmodern
consumers are not ‘fooled’ by images—they
know how ads work and resist, embrace, or
ignore them at will. Moreover, goes this
line of thought, consumers see most ads
from an ironic, detached, or playful
perspective that dampens their effectiveness
as persuasive messages.
The Clueless Consumer
• Third, some commentators contend that
most consumers are unaware—and thus
unaffected by deep meaning in imagery.
Whereas close scrutiny of images often
reveals semiotic signification, advertising is
only skin deep—an ephemeral, playful part
of visual culture.
Clueless Consumers
• This proposition—which runs counter to the
savvy consumer claim—is fairly easily
refuted by the literature. When asked,
consumers are able to make detailed
inferences about imagery and meaning in
ads (e.g. Ritson and Elliot 1999; Hirschman
and Thompson 1997; McQuarrie and Mick
1999; Mick and Buhl 1992; Zaltman and
Coulter 1995).
Salem and Significance
Naive Semioticians
• However, this could be a demand artifact—when
prompted, for the benefit of the interested
interviewer people may be creating meanings on
the spot.
• In my experience, however, most people readily
make associations and symbolic connections from
ads, using metaphors, images, and semiotics, often
without awareness of what they are doing.
Zapping
• Perhaps consumers pay little attention to
images, including ads. Cognitive capacity,
heuristic processing, interest, and
motivation limit human attention.
• Consumers ‘zap’ through ads with their
handy remote control units, rarely resting
their eyes on commercial images.g
Zapping
• In many ways, doubts about how much
consumers pay attention to ads—and how
effective advertising images are—constitute
an empirical question. However, several
strands of evidence can be gathered to
refute the claim that consumers pay little
attention to advertising.
Saturating the Market
• Advertising appears in more forms than
ever—on the internet, within television
programs, on bus shelters, in sponsored
events.
• The logic of advertising underlies much of
visual culture.
Corporate Reluctance
• This type of advertising is difficult to ignore
or zap—it is designed to subtly occupy
consumer attention within the visual
environment. Certainly, the entire corporate
world would be reluctant to continue such
practices if they did not find them fairly
effective.
Breaking through the Clutter
• Second, consumers clearly pay attention to
some marketing campaigns—certain print
ads in particular have become collector’s
items, and hundreds of Websites post
popular images from CK One, Absolut,
Nike, and other celebrated campaigns.
(Nike spends $500 million per year)
Lifestyle images
• Furthermore, companies like Bare Walls sell
poster-sized advertising for home decor.
There is little distinction between many
celebrity images and advertising—pictures
have long been part of the publicity
machine.
Generating Meaning
• Third, most ads work through repeated
exposure—one need not pay much attention
to advertising imagery to recognize the
dominant figures and images of the ad
world. This exposure happens over months,
years, and generations.
Advertising is dead.
Long live advertising!
• Emerging economic phenomena—pricing
information on the Web, alternative marketing
strategies, and changing media use are combining
to alter advertising’s role in corporate strategy.
• The visual landscape will be irrevocably
transformed via revolutionary developments in
marketing communication technology and market
information. (?)
Polysemy
• Can images mean anything? Some
approaches suggest that images float in the
postmodern world—signs disconnected
from signifiers—allowing consumers free to
generate novel, resistant, and idiosyncratic
meaning.
Lens Culture
• Whereas I agree that consumers generate their
own meaning, and that they bring their own
cognitive, social, and cultural lenses to whatever
they see, this does not mean that the historical and
political processes that also generate meaning are
eliminated.
• I am theoretically and critically opposed to the
poststructural notion that signs float free of
historical situatedness.
Production and Consumption
of Images
• This is not to imply that meanings are fixed
historically, and that once an image is
decoded, interpretive work ceases.
• Rather, within a theoretical understanding
of visual consumption, images exist within
cultural and historical frameworks that
inform their production, consumption,
circulation, and interpretation.
Conclusions
• The visual arts are an impressive cultural referent
system that brand managers, art directors, and
advertising agencies draw upon for their strategic
representational power.
• Themes, subjects, and techniques from art history
illuminate contemporary imagery: “Art in all
cultures ultimately creates its meaning and vitality
by connecting the individual with persons of
forces greater than himself or herself” (Pelfrey
and Hall-Pelfrey 1993, p. 309-310).
Conclusions
• Associating visual consumption with the art
historical world helps to position and
understand branding as a global
representational system. The approach to
branding affords new perspectives to
investigate specific art historical
connections to branding and image
management.
Implications
• Finally, art-centered analyses often generate
novel concepts and theories for research on
fashion cycles, information technology, and
retro-marketing, for example.
Broader Research Goals
• Theoretical development about visual communication,
especially photography as an engine of marketing
communications, corporate identity, and Web design.
• Understanding brands and consumption within the
semiotic realm: myth, codes, signification, and meaning,
and placing contemporary brands, marketing campaigns,
and consumption processes in a visual (art, aesthetics, and
graphic design) historic perspective.
• Theorizing the relationships between economic
development and the creation of aesthetic processes.
• In addition, my research addresses broader concerns of
how the image economy intersects with consumer choice,
image literacy, informed citizenship and the ideals of an
educated open society.