2/18/2023 0 Comments H and m ad gone wrong![]() ![]() If you're a brand, let alone a globally successful one, this is one of the most critical things you need to constantly carry in mind: t hink about what it means before you design it. Brands need to be responsible for the meanings they create The same it works with people and countering a bad impression, really. It takes a ferocious amount of consistency to counter that effect and restore a positive brand image again. So if you create a meaning you don't want to be associated with or that counters your brand values due to association with a context you didn't intend to tap into, you can be sure that it will stay with people for some time. Meaning has this one unfavorable quality: It’s highly malleable, changing its nature based on a context, but once it’s connected to something tangible (through a shared network of mental associations), it tends to stick in people’s minds for a long time. Therefore, the brand’s – even if unintentional – culturally insensitive framing of a product photoshoot is the wider message about H&M as a brand and its core values. Context is not only the new product, it's also the new brand. Perhaps one of the most fundamental axioms of marketing semiotics is that the context overrides text and creates a new meaning. The framing of your product becomes your message. Think of context as the ultimate ace – it ups the ante. ![]() What it means is that the context in which you present your message or a product bears a much higher symbolic significance to the overall framing of your message or a product, that it will override the meaning of a message you intended to convey. It seems fairly straightforward, but it's not. If one sentence should get close to a mantra in advertising, it’s this one: context is the message. So what are the key learnings from this (yet another) cultural fail that could be generified and applied further on? Here are the three key learnings for brands that come to mind first: 1. I always feel bad when something like this happens, especially when it was so easily preventable. It's hard to imagine no one caught this when it's so obvious to the customers in the instant it hits the real world. ![]()
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