Marketing Code-X

All Weather

Image for All Weather

Columbia ad

The CODE-X series catalogs a vast codex of source codes (aka “signs”) extracted from past audits.

The object of study in semiotics is not the signs but rather a general theory of signification; the goal of each “audit” is to build a model demonstrating how meaning is produced and received within a category or cultural territory. Signs on their own, therefore, only become truly revelatory and useful once we’ve sorted them into thematic complexes, and the complexes into codes, and the codes into a meaning map. We call this process “thick description”; the Code-X series is thin description.

Carhartt

ALL WEATHER” NORM: Bad weather can’t stop, or even slow down, our determined efforts.

Ram Trucks “Skate” commercial

ALL WEATHER” FORMS: Working people pressing forward with their tasks, relentlessly — despite wind, rain, snow, cold. Defiant, courageous. “It doesn’t fear the weather ahead,” “If this shirt had a finger…”

From a 2018 study of the Strong & Stoic space — defined as doing your duty, toughing it out, self-sacrificing, uncomplaining.

Tags: CODE-X, Spirit of the West