1. Sustainability: Semiotics & Emotioneering
Malcolm Evans - Founder, Space Doctors
The Marketing Society’s Green Think Tank:
Making Sustainability Sexy
15 May, 2012
DRA
FT

2. From Pollution to Sustainability
• Historical path from 1960s pesticide concerns to 2012 sustainability
• An Inconvenient Truth (2006) a watershed in terms
of changing agendas for marketing & consumer insight
• Clients turning to semiotics – new challenges,
what consumers can’t tell you
• Impact of global financial & economic
crisis – ecological agendas sidelined or
another major game-changer for companies
& brands?

3. Decoding a Category or Discourse
• Semiotics analyses brand communications in competitive
and cultural context
• Understanding codes or discourse around a particular
category, benefit or theme
• How brands use or break the codes
• Stretches into difficult areas that challenge
traditional marketing discourses

4. Understanding Sustainability – Why Semiotics?
• Decoding and tracking changing cultural
codes & meanings
• Individual markets and cross-cultural analysis
• Patterns of meaning and behavior that
consumers can’t yet articulate
• A predictive dimension - plotting trajectories
of change into the future

5. Residual, Dominant & Emergent Codes
SEMIOTICS MAPS COMMUNICATION
PATTERNS AND TRAJECTORIES TO
UNDERSTAND HOW CULTURES ARE
CHANGING & INDIVIDUAL BRANDS
ARE COMMUNICATING
— Around for some time, — Heavily played codes — New thinking & executional
dated — The norms & mood of today styles
— What consumers tend to
— The past in the present — First pieces of a jigsaw
play back in research.
puzzle
— May be revitalized (e.g.
retro, nostalgia, — Tomorrow’s dominant codes
reinvention)
— Not just spotting trends, but
engineering new meanings
In time new ideas & forms (EMERGENT) become mainstream (DOMINANT) then dated (RESIDUAL)

6. One Trajectory- Sustainability in Developed Markets
RESIDUAL DOMINANT EMERGENT
Actions Speak
Greenwash Transparency
Louder
Throughout the first half of A number of major disasters About doing rather than
the 00’s larger corporations including the BP oil spill and just saying. Companies of
have followed the lead of the 2008 market collapse- all sizes beginning cut back
more innovative eco-friendly have tested the integrity of on resource waste for both
companies by advertising big businesses and environmental & financial
‘Green’ products and institutions. Companies reasons. Eco-friendly action
initiatives even when they promising transparency and rather than advertising
weren’t particularly eco- environmental sensitivity creates publicity. Colour
friendly. are under intense scrutiny green not as prevalent or
and eco-friendly messaging used in as clichéd a way.
is not so easily believed.

7. Semiotics in Emerging Markets
• Emerging Markets have become a focus of interest for
semiotic & cultural analysis in the last decade
• Grasping the big picture – internal diversity and speed of change
• From emerging market entry for international brands - through
communicating local emerging brands internationally - to
innovation led by emerging rather than developed markets
• Importance of sustainability in emerging market context
• Space Doctors emerging market sustainability
database ongoing – plus client projects on emotional
coding of sustainability in specific categories in
developed markets
Shivakumar & Evans, “Insight, Cultural Diversity &
Revolutionary Change: Joined-Up Semiotic Thinking
for Developing Markets”, ESOMAR Congress paper,
Athens 2010

8. Semiotics & Sustainability
Semiotic & cultural analysis has helped clients in commercial
organisations, NGOs and governments understand how
communication and behaviour around ecological awareness &
sustainability have been evolving in individual countries and globally.
This topic, previously a focus of interest in specific pioneering markets
(e.g. Germany in the 1990s), first became a mainstream concern in
developed markets around 2006, particularly in response to the film of Al
Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, subsequently in emerging markets as well.
In June 2011) UK specialist semiotics agency Space Doctors carried out a
study of how sustainability-related culture and communication are evolving in
the major BRIC markets – with Brazil & China taking a lead role, each in
its own distinctive way, while Russia and India develop more
incrementally, reflecting local historical constraints & opportunities.
This is a cut-down version that analysis, emphasising
the unique role semiotics plays in helping bring words &
action closer together in the world of sustainability –
and leverage the critical emotional codes in
communication that help bring about significant
behaviour change.

9. Emerging Market Sustainability Mapping
Idealism!
CORPORATE-LED " COMMUNITY"
PRODUCTS +" GROWN "
INITIATIVES"
!
COLLABORATIVE
ACTION
ECO CHIC!
PRESERVING!
INNOCENCE!
HOLISTIC BUSINESS!
CONSUMER SELF!
TOP DOWN! MANAGEMENT! CULTURAL RECYCLING BOTTOM UP!
CREATIVE
EXPERIMENTATION"
ECO VALUE
MACRO EFFICIENCY!
LARGE-SCALE " INDIVIDUAL"
GOVERNMENT " BASED"
INVESTMENT" INNOVATION"
Pragmatism!

10. THEME 1!
COLLABORATIVE
ACTION!
Theme"
Brazil is leading this paradigm shift, with
collaborative cross pollenation of ideas
and cultures being a deeply entrenched
value in Brazilian culture. In India
Sustainability is largely led by
communities and NGO’s. In Russia and
China, where consumer capitalism and
individualism is relatively recent
development, collaboration is more
emergent, at times opening the door to
confrontation with governments over
quality of life and environmental issues.
Connections
Beyond notions of the Collective, where
accountability has the tendency to fade
out- A notion of active hands-on problem
solving. Getting things done together.
Stimulus Examples
Santander Spot, 2010 advert: “Let´s do
this together?” Marina Silva, Natura Ekos,
Project Hope China,
✔

11. THEME 2!
PRESERVING
INNOCENCE!
Theme"
Emergent markets are exhibiting a nostalgia for
pre-Industrial times in varied forms. In China
and to lesser extent in India, this is expressed
as a movement to preserve traditions,
endangered species and natural environments
central to national identity. Brazilʼs relationship
with the Amazon is the most pragmatic, with a
view to progress that is about preserving
indigenous biodiversity."
Connections"
Romanticised nature as a precious source of
tradition and national identity. essential cultural/
historical assets under threat of extinction with
the advent of Global industrialization."
"
Stimulus Examples"
Application of world cultural heritage sites:
Yellow Mountain, the Great Wall "
Ganges and Narmada Rivers. Save the Tiger"
"
✔

12. THEME 5!
CREATIVE
EXPERIMENTATION!
Theme"
Collaboration between urban planners,
architects, fashion designers. Aesthetic
pleasure benefitting from social and
environmental problem solving. In India, a more
prevalent form of this is the connection between
Artisanship and Social work. The recent ʻGreen
Breakthroughʼ in Brazil is quickly establishing it
as a leader in creative solutions across all
categories including art and design, energy
efficiency and ecological packaging. "
"
Connections
A mix of Art & Science. Re-purposing,
Reuse. Transform. Sustainability as an
inventive or creative attitude toward life
Stimulus Examples
artist Vik Muniz, Mario Queiroz designer
creating dresses out of PET plastics
Auroville Sustainable city, India
✔

13. THEME 6!
ECO-Value!
Theme"
A convenient link between some
environmentally sustainable products is their
cost effectiveness. In some of the BRICs
countries, recycling and re-use carry residual
negative connotations with rurality and poverty.
But increasingly, pragmatic Eco-Value brands
are percieved positively. "
"
Connections!
Environmentally sound and economically savvy
brands. Back to basics, living smart, Products
enabling people to make the most of what they
have. Cheap is positive."
"
Stimulus Examples!
IKEA (Russia) is changing negative
associations with sustainability there. Tata
Swach water purifiers for rural areas"
!
✔

14. Patterns across the BRICs
BRAZIL- Leader in Creativity & Collaboration"
"Innovation, Deeper engagement with Sustainability."
"Government + Corporations + Individuals working together"
"
CHINA- Top Down relationship to Sustainability."
"Leader in Government funded investments in Sustainbility. "
"Competitive investments. More surface engagement in creativity and individualism- less
NGOʼs or presence of individual business leaders in sustainability."
"
RUSSIA- Concerns for Immediate solutions/ gratification."
"Financial concerns overpower Sustainability concerns. "
"Conspicuous consumption is still going strong"
"Resource preservation, recycling, and re-use associations with Soviet era
poverty are fading but still present."
"
INDIA- Most robust Community and NGO activity but least organised from
the top-down perspective. Pockets of activity but no overall master
plan (cf. China). A robust heritage of spiritual practices which
emphasise empathy with nature."

15. Signs of the Times
• Companies have the resources to invest in new technologies
that governments & other organisations may not have.
• Post-greenwash culture: doing not talking, independent
performance evaluation
• Sustainability becoming a much bigger concept than is
covered by ‘green’ alone – company cultures & ethics,
fairness, greater social & economic equality
• An all-pervasive weasel word legitimising austerity in UK
(NB major differences in mood, language,
media & cultural buoyancy between Europe/US
and emerging markets)
• The importance of emotional coding, credible
personal & local/community semiotics, some
openness to interpretation & co-created
meaning (versus rational didactic monologue)

16. CONTACT
Space Doctors
Friese-Greene House
15-17 Middle Street
Brighton BN1 1AL
United Kingdom
T +44 (0) 1273 201172
M +44 (0) 7867 554129
F +44 (0) 1273 201173
E
m.evans@space-doctors.com
W
www.space-doctors.com
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