A Semiotic Reading of Cultural Discourse
The Challenge: Our client, a marketing/business consultancy had to advise and guide Mahindra on refreshing their brand and product portfolio with an eye to the future. As such, they wanted to know what the concept of Alpha-ness stands for in contemporary culture, through a study of popular culture discourse.
Our Approach: We selected a large sample of texts from popular culture – movies (33 films, 25 in Hindi, 8 in Tamil/Telugu) and web series (19 in all, 16 in Hindi and 3 in Tamil/Telugu) that explored notions of power, dominance, strength, protection and such ideas within the construct of their narrative. Apart from this, we decoded SUV category communication and compared it with Sedan communication (87 TVCs) by all the leading brands in the auto sector.
Insights from Semiotic Decoding:
Alpha is often used as a substitute for Machismo and the tough masculine. However, in popular culture today, Alpha-ness has a much broader definition, to do with living a life that makes an impact on the world around.
Alpha is de-gendered, viz, both men and women can display Alpha traits.
There are 8 traits/qualities that define Alphaness. These are anchored into a socio-centric construct, not an individualistic construct; hence has a strong moral dimension to it as well.
Results:
Our analysis and the codes identified gave the Client a clear direction and way forward for redirecting the Mahindra brand and product portfolio.