Marketing Code-X

Soulful Rebel

Image for Soulful Rebel

Bulleit 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.

Jack Daniels ad

SOULFUL REBEL” NORM: A man who might have felt right at home in the old west or smuggling spirits during Prohibition might probably feels alienated by the modern world. While professional and social environments are constricting, drinking and spirits encourage a nonconformist edge.

Jeremy Renner in Rémy Martin ad

SOULFUL REBEL” FORMS: “Create wilderness out of empire” (Bulleit), “The world zigs. You zag.” (Southern Comfort); “Those in favor of free spirits raise a glass” (Jack Daniels); “a long history of doing things their own way” (Jim Beam). “What’s your wild rabbit?” (Hennessy campaign about what motivates you to succeed), “One Life — Live Them” “Actor/Producer/Renovator/Musician” (Remy Martin campaign with Jeremy Renner). Bulleit: “Anti-established.” Brand ambassadors who are creative, soulful, curious, experimental, adventurous. People looking inward — digging deep.

From a 2016 study of the UNIQUE & INVENTIVE space — within the Brown Spirits category.

Tags: CODE-X, Spirits, Whiskey