Semiotics, Introduction: How Symbols, Packaging & Advertising Communicate

Course Category:

• Professional Development course

Instructor:

• Charles Leech, PhD)

If you are interested or involved in brands or ads in any way, or if you are a qualitative researcher who deals with packaging, logos, or creative testing, then semiotic analysis can be a valuable tool that will give you access to insight and information not available to other qualitative methodologies.

This full-day introductory workshop will introduce members of the market research community to the qualitative discipline of semiotics, widely recognized as a popular, up-and-coming qualitative research tool. This course is primarily designed for qualitative research consultants, directors, and moderators with no or little experience in semiotics, although those with previous semiotics exposure will benefit from sections that explore brand new applications to youth and multimedia research issues. The course will briefly explore the roots of marketing semiotics as an academic theory, but will concentrate on a wide range of applied semiotics, using examples drawn from current advertising, music, film, television, and pop culture. After exploring the mechanics of semiotic analysis, and how this tool can be applied to qualitative projects, the afternoon sessions will look at 'metasemiotics' (with particular youth applications), and related areas of 'intertextuality', and the semiotics of music and multimedia texts. The goal of this introductory workshop is to help students look at media texts with a "semiotic eye", and expose them to a wide range of applications for semiotics, and all the different kinds of marketing texts that might benefit from this unique perspective.

The format of the course will be a combination of tutorial-style lecture and small-group, hands-on workshop sessions addressing real marketing issues, liberally punctuated with hands-on group analyses of contemporary film, TV, and music clips. Copies of Persuasive Signs, an introduction to semiotics written specifically for the advertising and marketing community co-authored by Ron Beasley and Marcel Danesi, will be available for interested participants.

	Members seeking CMRP designation				Client-Side Researcher		Research Supplier
	Little or no exposure		Less than 2 years experience		2-8 years experience		8+ years experience

Experienced researchers are encouraged to register.

Major topics covered in this course include

• The Theory of Semiotics
• Applied Semiotics
• The Mechanics of Semiotics, or, How To Do It
• Focus Group Semiotics
• Metasemiotics: The World of Youth Pop Culture
• Intertextuality in Marketing and Pop Culture
• The Semiotics of Music: Marketing Applications
• Multimedia Semiotics: The Art of Narrative Congruence in TV commercials

"The course helped me to be more creative and more abstract. It offered new ways to approach music, advertisement and names."

"Thought provoking from beginning to end."

"Enjoyed (Charles Leech's) enthusiasm about the subject and his obvious experience in the area."

• Course Length: 1 Day
• Check-in: 8:30 am
• Classes: 9 am - 5 pm
• Lunch will be provided
• For terms and conditions, click here

The address of the course location will be sent to you with your course confirmation.

MRIA courses and their administration are subsidized by members' fees. Therefore, members enjoy a reduced cost for courses.