Photo courtesy of AD
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.
Brighton…
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?
AL DEAKIN
Aged 11, I spent much of the summer of 1978 wandering the West End of London in the company of boys a few years older than me who identified as punks. We were all semi-respectably employed as members of the cast of Oliver!, a big West End show at the time, and after matinee performances in the hours before our evening curtain call, we were allowed to go out and explore the surrounding area. This was at the tail end of the original London punk “moment”, and we would go into shops selling paraphenalia associated with the movement while seeking out exotic examples of its participants on the streets around Leicester Square and Covent Garden.
The combination of being paid to pose as a 19th century London pick pocket in front of a thousand people every night, while also having modest access to this actual, emerging London of shiny black PVC, pink mohair and scandalous imagery on ripped t-shirts wreaked havoc on my 11 year old brain. It left me with a sense of the allure and glamour of playing with signification, a love of London as a particularly fertile forest of signs and an unrealistic sense of what the rest of my life was going to be like.
SEMIOVOX
Describe your first encounter(s) with the theory and practice of semiotics.
AL DEAKIN
In the third year of my degree, I had an operation which meant I was immobile for a few months. I decided to use the time to actually read some of the “academic” books on our reading lists to improve my chances of getting a good grade (up until then I’d been more interested in reading novels and poems than reading about them). One of these was A Roland Barthes Reader, edited by Susan Sontag, and I was immediately electrified by Sontag’s appreciation of Barthes in the introduction.
My hot headed 22 year old brain was particularly taken by her description of Barthes as engaging in an “erotics” of thought. Petit bourgeois oik that I was, it had never occurred to me that intellectual activity had anything to do with “erotics”, but it spurred me to read Barthes’ essay “Myth Today”, driven by the misapprehension that mastering it might in some way enable me to have more sex. Needless to say, I eventually accepted the sober reality that the pleasures of reading semiotic and critical theory have to be reward enough in themselves. Most of the time, anyway.
The thing that didn’t attract me was the character of some of the academics I met early on who presented themselves as experts in the theory. There’s a certain chilly superiority that can attach itself to the language and attitudes of semiotics and critical theory, an implicit disdain for people who don’t get it and a subsequent tendency to marginalise yourself in such a way that only makes the first two attributes worse.
I can remember thinking “I don’t want to end up like them” so I’ve always tried to champion ideas derived from critical theory as resources in an ongoing conversation rather than weapons for winning the war of the smart arses.
I know this point is more about a style or attitude that can attach itself to semiotics than the theory itself, but I do think that any school of thought which claims a privileged understanding of the material of everyday experience has to be treated with some degree of constructive scepticism.
SEMIOVOX
How did you find your own way to doing semiotics?
AL DEAKIN
This story may inspire some disapproval since it features a young man with no particular interest in brands or the commercial world benefiting from the privilege of his connections.
In 1996 I was working as a lecturer and academic in English and Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster, trying to complete a phd on “The Imagining of Disability in 19th Century London” and writing about film for The Guardian’s early online incarnation. At the same time, I was playing in a band, and while real musical success was a long way off, we had regular gigs in many small London venues.
At the end of our shows we occasionally performed a music hall pastiche called “Aunty Mabel” — working with Lionel Bart had a regrettably long lasting effect on me — featuring some cringeworthy double entendres best left in the 20th century.
One night, our keyboard player’s mum came to see us. She particularly enjoyed “Aunty Mabel” and later asked her son, Phil, if I’d be interested in doing some work for her company since she was looking for people who understood critical theory (she knew I was an academic) but who weren’t afraid of making a fool of themselves in front of an audience. Our performance of “Aunty Mabel” had convinced her that I had the second quality.
Our keyboard player’s mum was Virginia Valentine, founder of Semotic Solutions, and she was trying to replace Greg Rowland and Malcolm Evans who’d both recently left the company. She invited me to teach a course on the basics of semiotics to the rest of the staff at SemSol (as we used to call it), and having delivered that successfully I began working on projects.
Needless to say, once I started working there I realised the need for thick skin implied by Ginny’s appreciation of my onstage shamelessness wasn’t a joke. The commercial world was seriously divided about the “new” insight approach she was propagating and client meetings were likely to include moments of confrontational derision in which you had to think on your feet in order to avoid what felt like humiliating disaster. A friend of mine at the time described it as “guerrilla raids into corporate culture” which was an attractive illusion. Either way, I loved it and my future was decided.
SEMIOVOX
What are the most important attributes of a good semiotician?
AL DEAKIN
I’ve only ever practiced semiotics in tandem with cultural insight so everything that follows reflects that, and it also applies to using the approach to service a client brief rather than an academic career.
- Curiosity. This one’s obvious, but the kind of curiosity I value doesn’t understand things too quickly and stays open to the presence of whatever’s being explored without trying to contain it in a theory box. Umberto Eco said that being a semiotician means you can be interested in everything, and I like people who are drawn to it for this reason.
- A strong theoretical grounding, held lightly. I use theory as a technology and Martin Heidegger defined technology as a mode of revealing, so I enjoy working with those who can apply, for example, a Piercian approach while being happy to let go of it should it not reveal anything helpful.
- Acrobatic thinking. This involves being able to turn ideas upside down, imaginatively inhabit different cultural frameworks and be always willing to ask “What if the opposite was true?” as a way of enriching the insight.
- A sense of humour. I don’t agree with Martin Amis about many things, but one killer observation he made is that you can’t be a serious thinker without a sense of humour. I completely agree with this; humour adds suppleness, lets in light and can itself be a form of insight.
- Bravery. Good semioticians aren’t afraid of presenting ideas that polite society may find preposterous, so long as they open up helpful options for our clients. Sometimes it’s our job to bring discomfort to uninspired brand managers in the M4 corridor.
SEMIOVOX
What three books about semiotics have you found the most useful and enlightening in your own work?
AL DEAKIN
Again, this reflects my interest in using semiotics with cultural insight, or what used to be called cultural materialism. I don’t think any of these would find their way onto a University course on semiotics, but the way in which they complement semiotic thinking has been very useful in my own work.
- Raymond Williams’s Culture and Materialism. As an academic, Williams had a big influence on me as a writer who was willing to grapple with big theoretical ideas while trying to honour the nuances of individual and shared experience. His humanism, his radicalism and his tough minded commitment to making “hope possible rather than despair convincing” are a continued source of inspiration even if these days I find his prose style a bit suety. This collection of essays was written in the 1970s when he was at the height of his engagement with what was described as “continental theory” (semiotics being a part of that) and most importantly it contains the essay “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory” in which he first defines the concept of residual, dominant and emergent cultural forms.
This also gives me the opportunity to plug the Masterclass on Semiotics which Gemma Jones and I run in which we spend some time exploring the value of this original version of RDE.
- Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the Folk Tale. I managed to distill — some might say degrade — some of Propp’s units of the folk tale to understand what made TV ads a success when I was at Semiotic Solutions. It helped inform the development of campaigns by Volvic, Coca Cola and Tango and last time I checked was still included in the ESOMAR advanced semiotics course. So this was significant because it was my first contribution to the commercial approach beyond codes and squares and RDEs and it helped me get noticed. For those still awake, I was particularly interested in the relationship between the hero and what Propp described as the helper and the magic agent. It was interesting how often unsuccessful copy positioned the brand as a hero while confining the implied consumer to a supporting role. I don’t know how relevant this would be now to the more chaotic communications environment that brands inhabit, but I’m considering polishing it off and giving it a run again should an idle moment present itself.
- Mark Fisher’s Postcapitalist Desire. A collection of lecture notes from the course Fisher taught before his death by suicide in 2016. It’s an attempt to explore the desire for a way of life beyond capitalism and how it might be productively harnessed. Recently I discussed this with a friend of mine who heads up research at a large CPG organisation. He looked panicked and changed the subject, but I live in hope.
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?
AL DEAKIN
Nowadays I emphasise the ability of culturally informed semiotics to unblock thinking and reveal options and possibilities that may be otherwise unavailable, and that it can apply to communications, strategy and team dynamics. But I’d phrase that differently according to the client I’m addressing.
I’ve always found understanding more about the client and their needs is more helpful and more likely to contribute to a sale than any off the shelf explanation of the approach. I know the industry wisdom is that you live or die by the elevator pitch, but I’d prefer to use the elevator to find out a little about them so I could come up with a relevant proposal. If a client’s sceptical, it’s always important to find out more about them and their organisation before thinking about how to differently frame your offer.
I do use representative case studies once I know a bit about the client, because explaining by example tends to work well for the people I’ve worked with. I’m sure everyone in the business has loads of these.
SEMIOVOX
What specific sorts of semiotics-driven projects do you find to be the most enjoyable and rewarding?
AL DEAKIN
Fast, creative ones where you’re brought into unblock strategic or creative thinking. I enjoy its ability to open minds, reveal new possibilities and energise people and I like working collaboratively with associates and clients to achieve that.
I also enjoyed working with big corporations on telling stories to drive activity concerning social good activity before much of that got put on the back burner, if not taken off the stove altogether. I was never under any illusions that a lot of this would not be jettisoned should the Trumpists be seen to win the cultural conversation, but I worked with lots of very committed people fighting to make progressive organisational changes in their workplaces and in many instances they were successful. This is something which the justified criticisms of corporate purpose as a branding exercise have a tendency to overlook.
This is where I should give a shout out to Cato Hunt and Fiona McNae for their work on using language to shift organisational behaviour — which is useful even in the context of changing corporate priorities — as well as the work that Jess Parr has done on gender identity and Roberta Graham on sex and sexuality.
SEMIOVOX
What frustrates you about how semiotics is practiced and/or perceived, right now?
AL DEAKIN
I don’t like some of the semiotics that’s been circulated on LinkedIn recently. There seems to be a lot of “I’m a semiotician so I know what this ad really means” going on which I don’t think is very helpful to anyone. I agree with the politics of many people offering deconstructions of — for example — last year’s American Eagle campaign, but their communication analysis doesn’t reflect the way that I’ve found semiotics useful or interesting. (See my answer to the question above for more on that).
As well as this, one of the ongoing criticisms of commercial semiotics from client side is that it uses specialist jargon and academic affectations to explain the bleeding obvious. Some of the commercial semiotics I’ve seen recently — and actually throughout my career — is guilty here. For it to continue as a valuable option it needs to offer insights that are unique to it as a way of thinking, as well as being of practical use to those engaging it. Generative AI’s ability to do a reasonable job of Bobby Basic semiotics only makes this more important.
SEMIOVOX
Peirce or Saussure?
AL DEAKIN
Saussure. From what I know of Peirce, he’s a much more interesting and ambitious thinker than Saussure, but it’s Ferdinand’s definition of the sign which underpins Barthes’ theory of first- and second-order signification and it’s that which opened my mind to semiotics in the first place. I also find it relatively easy to explain to potential clients and I feel strongly attached to anything that’s helped me sell projects. Barthes of course would be appalled by that, as he would by many of us.
SEMIOVOX
What advice would you give to a young person interested in this sort of work?
AL DEAKIN
Do your best to invest your talents in something more worthwhile than selling dogshit products that no one needs, but if you can’t avoid that — and I’m afraid sometimes you may not — try and and enjoy it for what it is, and buy yourself a nice pair of shoes.
Oh also — repeat business is more important than applause. I still have to remind myself of that one.
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