Visual representations of goods and services through their brandings: The semiotic foundations of a language of brands

While marketing literature has been concerned primarily with the concept of the ‘brand’, it has neglected the study of branding in its most concrete figurative dimensions. This article is dedicated to a semiotic inquiry into the nature of brandings and the theoretical principles which take into account their visual constructions. After having described the conceptual tools used, we show, based on examples, that branding is above all the source of a story of the branded object and that it cannot be reduced to a set of (even coded) stimuli. Next, based on a sample of different vintages of Bordeaux and Beaujolais wines, we show how the brandings, as a visual language, make it possible to recount all of the nuances of a positioning and a segmentation within a particular category and to make distinctions between categories. In conclusion, we underline the heuristic benefit of a semiotic study to understand and get to grips with the efficacy of a branding strategy.