Marketing Code-X

Taking Flight

Image for Taking Flight

GoPro social

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.

Burton social

TAKING FLIGHT” NORM: How high can we fly? Let’s defy the laws of gravity and push ourselves into the stratosphere.

Clockwise from top left: Red Bull social, Lonely Planet website, Clif social, Mountain Dew social

TAKING FLIGHT” FORMS: Images of people leaping and flying used as metaphors for liberation, exuberance, possibility. Primarily a visual code, but sometimes language around flight: “Red Bull gives you wings.”

From a 2017 study of the TEST YOURSELF (defined as: achieving freedom from any physical constraints holding you back) territory within the Adventure space in US brand communications.

Tags: Adventure, CODE-X, Test Yourself