Sarah Jane Johnson is a principal at Athena Brand Wisdom, a Toronto-based market research agency specializing in all aspects of brand experience.\u00a0 In a past life she was an Account Planner at a number of Ad Agencies, including BMP DDB (London), Kirshenbaum & Bond (New York) and TBWA Chiat Day (Toronto).\u00a0 Sarah\u2019s semiotic experience ranges from a study of the semiotics of obesity in America to the semiotic history of Ritz crackers advertising.\u00a0 She has lectured and presented papers at a number of universities and conferences.\u00a0\u00a0 She was also an organizer and host of Semiofest Toronto in 2017.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Sarah writes:<\/p>\n
\u201cI first came across semiotics while studying Anthropology and English at McGill University, but never thought it would be a way I could make a living.\u00a0 When I discovered marketing semiotics I realized it was a perfect way for me to use my eternal obsession with culture and the close reading skills I developed as an English student.\u00a0 When I first saw Semiofest being discussed on the Semiotic Thinking Group before it was ever launched, I knew I had to be a part of it.\u00a0 I had been thinking of getting involved in commercial semiotics but wasn\u2019t really sure how.\u00a0 That first Semiofest was the perfect launching pad. I immediately fell in love with an event that brought together a community of bright and fascinating people from all over the world.\u00a0 At the end of an exhilarating and exhausting two days I was full of motivation and had met brilliant thinkers from all over the world \u2013 many of whom I was able to tap when a global project fell into my lap a few months later.\u00a0 Since then, Semiofest has always been one of the highlights of my year: where I go to be informed, inspired and to connect and reconnect with folks who care about Semiotics as much as I do.\u00a0\u00a0 It reminds me of what I love about Semiotics: its ability to make sense of culture \u2013 mine and others, and the infinite meaningfulness of the world around us.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sarah Jane Johnson is a principal at Athena Brand Wisdom, a Toronto-based market research agency specializing in all aspects of brand experience.\u00a0 In a past life she was an Account Planner at a number of Ad Agencies, including BMP DDB (London), Kirshenbaum & Bond (New York) and TBWA Chiat Day (Toronto).\u00a0 Sarah\u2019s semiotic experience ranges … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"project_category":[17],"project_tag":[],"class_list":["post-1100","project","type-project","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","project_category-the-advisory-council"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project\/1100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/project"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project\/1100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"project_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_category?post=1100"},{"taxonomy":"project_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.semiofest.com\/2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/project_tag?post=1100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}