The semiotics of social-distance branding during the post-coronavirus crisis

Abstract

Social distance, as a non-static cognitive attribute of acceptance among particular groups across different contexts, has been resemioticized during the coronavirus crisis and legalized worldwide to reduce global strain on healthcare systems and prevent deaths. Concerning this, brand designers have tried to persuade the brand community to benefit from products or services safely by staying away from others as much as possible instead of in-person contact. This research was conducted to discover the semiosis process of social-distancing resemioticization through creating values of brands during the post-coronavirus crisis. The corpus consists of 124 brands – all sampled purposely from 2019 to 2021 – which was investigated via a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods using an integrated model in a functional perspective. All the results highlight the fact that, although brand designers have attempted to creatively resemioticize social-distancing during the coronavirus crisis as a means of increasing or enriching brand values, still some semiosis layers of brand discourse have been overlooked. Pertaining to this, the authors try to apply a new perspective of marketing semiotics to appraise consumer investments in light of a socio-cultural setting by conducting an inquiry about the semiosis of individual brand discourses to manage consumer perceptions regarding brand equity.

Unravelling semiotics in 2022: A year in review

“…As a result, brand designers have encouraged the brand community to use products and services safely by minimizing inperson contact and maintaining social distance. The research conducted by Haghbin, Nambusubramaniyan and Monfared (2022) explores the process of the "re-semioticization" of social distancing and how it creates value for brands post-COVID-19. Their research aligns with the area of marketing semiotics.…”