Semiotics has been associated with a type of idealism (Rob says), dealing only with immaterial signs. Rob is going to see if there’s a way of also anchoring it in the earth: something can be both a material thing and a sign (e.g., a communion wafer). [Abstract]

Everything is being branded these days. Brands are “unstable composite entities” joining a thing (product) and language. Brands don’t become real until tokens of them (e.g., individual cans of Coke) are taken up and used.

Rob will give three pathologies of brand will illustrate the way they are composite and what their semiotics are: genericide, ingredient branding, and viral marketing. These will show us how names and things are vulnerable in different ways.

Genericide=when a court decides that a brand name is now generic. Consumers take over the brand and the product is a mere commodity.

In ingredient branding, the product, not the name, becomes invisible. E.g., Nutrasweet, Intel, Dolby. In this case, the mark, logo or brand name, is the only part of the product that is visible to the consumer. The marketing folks think that the consumer needs help in making the value of the ingredient product. The host and ingredient brands circulate independently, but lending each other value: if you’ve seen Intel Inside on a Dell box and then a Bob’s Computers box, some of the value of Dell rubs off on Bob.

Viral marketing as in Hotmail means that the customer provides an “involuntary endorsement.”

In synthetic worlds (chats, MMORPGs), people’s interaction is mediated by names. We make ourselves available to one another via names. There is a chain of names from user name to IP address to social security to a real person. “Sooner or later, you strike meat.”

Conclusion: Brands provide a new type of relationship among people. The semiotic vulnerabilities exist in synthetic worlds. E.g., a man in the real world was arrested for selling someone else’s online property. So, there is something special about the earth after all.

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