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From local to global and back to the original

by Martha Arango, Semiotician, Beyond Research, Sweden

This abstract concerns one of the biggest dairy companies in Sweden that over the last few years has experienced a significant international growth. The company has a very long tradition and a strong brand image in Sweden and the brand is considered one of Sweden’s love brands.

A new communication platform was created with the aim of attracting consumers globally and to ensure the local target groups maintain loyalty to the brand. The campaign was launched internationally and locally with the slogan “Closer to nature”.

The objective of this semiotic analysis was on a deeper level to understand why the new TV commercial had a half-hearted response locally.

Semiotics deconstructed the commercial into: characters, attitudes, body language, clothes codes, main narrative structures, visual scenes, environment, temporality, rhythms, viewpoints, music/sound-images, pay-off and the values they convey.

The results were compared with the brand values and the Swedish cultural context. The semiotic output provided the answers to why this commercial was not successful in reaching its target groups locally despite the fact that the concept, in terms of closeness to nature, is the typical way of life for Swedish people.