A Semiotic Brand Audit for Chambor
The Challenge: A dramatic and significant shift in India’s make up culture had taken place due to the development and growth of Influencers and social media platforms. The brand needed to be re-imagined and re-constructed for future relevance. But before this could be effectively done, its historic evolution needed to be understood, its building blocks and core symbolic DNA identified.
Our Approach: We went back to the beginning of the brand’s development and tracked the changes that had taken place over its 30 year history in response to competitive pressures as well as changing contexts of consumption. The brand was also compared with its leading competitors as a sign system – a system of signs, symbols, codes and narratives/narrative tropes. We decoded websites, packs and communication material. In addition, we also studied make up culture as created and taught by beauty influencers and make up artistes to identify what make up itself now stands for or represents in beauty culture.
Insights from Semiotic Decoding:
1. We were able to identify the core binaries that sit at the heart of the brand and how these had changed over the historic evolution of the brand. We also asked questions about the changing contexts of usage.
For e.g: Frenchness, Swissness and Geneva (European glamour inspired by the French luxury brands such as Lancome).
For e.g: The image of glamour drawn from historic French/European symbolism and its relevance for today.
2. An extremely detailed decoding of pack signs and symbols provided a catalogue of symbolism as well as guidance for their usage, going forward.
3. The cultural decoding of make-up and what it represents today revealed the core concept for the re-construction of the brand to make it relevant to today’s young consumers.
Results:
The marketing team got the new strategic direction that they were looking for, which also tested very well with consumers.