Dr. Román Esqueda Atayde

TOPIC

The Brand as an extension of the mind. Brand semiosis as complex interactive systems.

Bio

Román is the director of Neural Research, a qualitative marketing research company based in Mexico City. He has a 34 year experience applying semiotics, rhetoric, cognitive sciences and neuroscience to help brands to develop marketing strategies. He holds a full time position as professor and Researcher at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Cuajimalpa and has combined his professional activities with his academic work.

His path started when he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study doctoral level courses and develop his research project on marketing semiotics at Indiana university, Bloomington. He worked under Tom and Jean Sebeok at the research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies.

His professional career has taken him to work for Mexican and international companies. Among them: Alsea, Bancomer, Banco Azteca, Campbell´s Soup, Comex, Comextra, Conagra, Estee Lauder, Expansión, Firmenich, Heineken, MasterCard, Peñafiel, Purina, Scotiabank, Bimbo, Colgate, Kellogg, Jumex, Herdez, Kentucky, Liverpool, Merck, Mondelez, Nestle, SCA, Sigma, Pepsico, Posadas de México, and many others. His main interest is in developing scientific tools to help brands achieve their goals.
His company Neural Research has developed many projects in the LATAM region.

Dr. José Manuel Valenzuela

TOPIC

Panorama of continual re-construction of Mexican identity inside and outside of national borders; Mexicans in the U.S, the idea of Mexico in Latin America: how Mexicans represent themselves and are represented abroad.

Bio

His pioneering work has shed the light on the sociocultural processes that define the Mexican-U.S. border and youth movements in Latin America and the United States. He is regarded as a preeminent scholar in both of these areas of study and has garnered wide esteem in Mexico and Latin America for his work in the cultural studies field. His contributions include germinal work in the study of strategic cultural processes, notably focusing on new social identities and sociocultural practices tied to drug trafficking. His research has also addressed themes related to culture and national identity, urban sociology and popular culture. He has been a research professor in the Department of Cultural Studies of the College of the Northern Border at Tijuana, Mexico, since 1988.

Nora Morales & Luis Antonio Rivera Díaz

Training session

Working in the field of applied semiotics we are often challenged to communicate ideas visually.
Not only to Clients but other team members that we work with e.g. creatives. Sometimes we have to communicate semiotic concepts or brand concepts to visual thinkers like designers. Sometimes we have to communicate complex and layered concepts and we don’t have the confidence in our visual skills to bring them to life, in visual formats.
We are happy to offer you a Visual-Semiotics workshop that integrates design thinking and semiotic rigour.
The main objective of the workshop is to develop the ability to make creative and insightful visual notes in order to discover the potential of multi-modal semiotic resources to represent and communicate ideas.

During this workshop, attendees will:
a. Learn what a visual note is.
b. Analyse social and cultural life in Zocalo – the main square of the city.
c. Know how visual notes relate to semiotic theory, including Peirce’s objects of representation.
d. Create your own visual notes based on observation of social and cultural life in Zocalo.
e. Explore how this visual note can be used for meaning and information retrieval at a later date.
All attendees will develop skills to create visual notes, understand the semiotic nature of different visual notes techniques and how this method can enrich your practice.

Luis Antonio Rivera Díaz will offer us techniques for analysing visual notes and generating
functional schemes to synthesise and communicate better what we observed as insights.

In this last part of the workshop, we will work in teams to practice together and then socialise the
knowledge generated. In addition, if you attend the workshop, you’ll be able to put our new skills into practice as we take notes from Semiofest 2023!
You don’t have to be a graphic designer or a visual artist to attend this workshop – it is for everyone!

 

 

 

 

Nora Morales 

Bio

Nora is a researcher at the Department of Design Theory and Processes of the UAM Cuajimalpa, Mexico, where she teaches courses in the Bachelor and Master of Information and Communication Design [MADIC]. She is member of the Image, Technology, Culture and Art Research Group, of the Division in Communication and Design Sciences and collaborates in the Laboratory of Socio-territorial Analysis [LAST] of Social Sciences and Humanities of the UAM Cuajimalpa. Her research focuses on the visualization of spatio-temporal data, visual narratives and participatory design methods for knowledge management and innovation. Nora has an extensive experience in innovation and design consultancy for the private and the public sector in Mexico and abroad.

Portfolio

Luis Antonio Rivera Díaz

Bio

Luis Antonio Rivera Diaz is a graphic design professor specialising in Graphic Design Management.
His research focuses on the relationship between graphic design and rhetoric. He is the author of
articles and books on the subject, such as "La Nueva Educación del Diseño Gráfico" ("The New
Education Approaches to Graphic Design”) and "La Evaluación de la Educación Superior del Diseño
en México" (The Evaluation of Higher Design Education in Mexico). Currently, he researches the
relationship between the humanities and higher design studies.

 

Coco Wu

Understanding “creative expression” among Chinese youth culture.

Bio

Coco Wu is one of the few native Chinese semiotics specialists. She has a sharp understanding of cultural nuances and local evolutions and a great commercial semiotic thinking. She applies her passion for semiotics to identifying culturally relevant strategies and correlated brand activations. She has successfully conducted projects for FMCG, food & beverage, and tech categories etc. She has also been invited to deliver her cultural insights to public by Campaign Asia, China Daily, CGTN, and CBN etc. In her free time, she is a lifestyle blogger, outdoor explorer, and an active observer of cultural dynamics.

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Martha Arango

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Hanna Holländer

Case Study – Swedish Motormen´s National Confederation; a resemiotization of the brand.

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Charise Mita & Ting Zhang

When East Meets West Meets East: The Resemiotisation of Ambiguity

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Coppelia Yañez & Samantha Herrerías

Shifting Meanings from the Street to the Screens: what Brands need to learn about Social Movements

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Gemma Jones & Malex Salamanques

Workshop: Re-Semiotizing Futures: Introducing Speculative Design as a Tool for Semioticians

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Peter Glassen

DECODING SWISSNESS – How the myth of Switzerland was resemiotized | A tribute to Roland Barthes.

Bio
Peter Glassen is a brand consultant and semiotician from Switzerland. He advises and supports companies and organisations in the strategic development of their brands. As the founder of the Swiss expert network for applied semiotics (semiotics.ch), he focuses on cultural codes and signs. In addition to his work as a consultant, he is a university lecturer for image theory.
Peter Glassen (born in East Germany) has been familiar with Swiss culture since many years.

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Vijay Parthasarathy

Resemiotizing towards a more emotionally resonant brand communication:  A quadrant analysis model.

Bio

Vijay Parthasarathy is a business philosopher and cultural anthropologist whose expertise lies in the semiotics of self-awareness. He consults globally for a mix of Fortune 500 firms and agencies. His perspective often features in the media, and he is frequently invited to deliver talks at universities and conferences. He has a PhD from UT Austin.

 

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William Landell Mills

Using children’s stories to inspire brand communication.

Bio

William Landell Mills started his career working for qual boutiques and then moved to Kantar, where he was made responsible for qual methodology. It was while running a global study on the ‘Ideal Man’ that he became fascinated by semiotics. William has presented at Admap, the MRS and most recently at the Esomar Global Conference. He works mainly on branding and design projects and has recently written about the emergence of new ways of seeing the world: the Digital Aesthetic.

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Alfredo Troncoso

REVAMPING FOOD PACKAGING FOR A HYPERINDULGENT MARKET: How to incorporate state of the art global codes without contradicting Mexico’s more is more cultural paradigm.

Bio

Alfredo Troncoso was born in Chile, raised in Uruguay and Argentina, graduated in France (PHD), married to an Italian…but has worked from Mexico for the last 35 years, both as university teacher and commercial semiotician.

At De la Riva we have our own ethnographic and syndicated studies allowing for discursive semiotic analysis, but also a wider narrative framing. Current work in F&B includes Grupo Modelo (Corona, Victoria, Modelo, etc), the Coca Cola Company, Danone, Bimbo, Barcel, among others.

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Fabian Gutierrez Gomez

Object theory. Theorizing material culture through the media act, signification and habitus. Case study: Reclusorio Preventivo Varonil Norte de la Ciudad de México

Bio

Fabian has bachelor’s degree in archaeology and master’s degree in design, information and communication, specializing in interaction systems.

Fabian participated in archaeological, research and interdisciplinary projects such as app design, video game design and development. He conducted app design research, which was presented at the 20th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Collaborated in creation of two entrepreneurship projects and was a mentor at TechnovationGirls Guanajuato, 2021.

As a speaker participated in more than 50 conferences, forums and congresses at national and international level.

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Rajan Luthra

Un-gender: Indian masculine expression of 21st century traces to 200 CE.

Bio

Rajan Luthra has been in a variety of workspaces tracing human stories in the newsroom to visual design to consumer insights. Recently, he worked on the fuzzy subject of empathy, decoding it in Indian context to craft a framework for brands. He counts cooking Jollof with a Nigerian woman in her sparse Lagos home as his most enjoyable ethnography.

For Semiofest 2018 he spoke on social media induced hyper-individualistic identities. He likes to scribble poetry and is an undisciplined writer.

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Sónia Marques

Consumerism, Religion and Ted Talks

Bio

Sónia Marques is a commercial semiotician basen in Lisbon, Portugal. She founded Indiz in 2003, a pioneering market research company with a cultural angle.

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Chris Arning

How semiotics helped revamp and revolutionise BBC’s humour strategy

Bio

Chris specialises in semiotics and cultural insight.

He has over 20 years experience in qualitative research and brand strategy. He was Head of Semiotics at Flamingo Research and set up Creative Semiotics Ltd. in 2010. Chris is a co-founder of Semiofest, and started the LinkedIn Semiotic Thinking Group. He also runs the online course How to Do Semiotics in Seven Weeks.

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Hamsini Shivakumar

The resemiotization of Sugarfree Green to activate 10x growth in e-comm.

Bio

Co-founder of Semiofest and a veteran of the research, communications and brand strategy space in India. She was the head of Strategy Planning at JWT Mumbai before she co-founded her own brand consultancy firm, Leapfrog Strategy in 2008.  Her paper on reading Cultural History to develop a framework for culture change was presented at the Semiotics Congress at Buenos Aires in 2019. She teaches applied semiotics and advertising research at India’s top communications schools

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Alexandra Robert

Semiotics in the field of speculative design: Reshaping future vision, use and behaviors for data-driven industrial innovation.

Bio

Alexandra Robert is a designer and expert in the application of semiotics to marketing and brands. She was art director and communication manager for major brands for more than 18 years before undertaking a Masters in Semiotics at Université Paris Cité and beginning her consulting career in 2013. She advises and manages strategic design projects for companies and organizations and is involved in social and environmental innovation projects in France. Since 2019, she has contributed to the experimentation of co-design methods and tools in collaboration with private and academic partners. In her capacity as workshop facilitator, she intervenes in transition and speculative design projects and explores the methodological contribution of the interaction between semiotics and the process of design.

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Sarah Johnson

Re-positioning Mexico: How Semiotic Analysis Helped Break Through Cultural Clichés and Provide Inspiring Regional Symbolism for Three Campari Brands

Sarah Johnson is a commercial semiotician who has conducted analyses ranging from obesity in American society to the cultural uses of cannabis.
She has worked in almost every category and with every customer target; from confectionery to cars, from technology to toys, from packaged goods to pharmaceuticals, from financial services to food, and from women and children to boomers and business decision-makers. Some of her clients include Gruppo Campari, L’Orèal, IBM Watson and Visa.
Sarah studied Anthropology, Philosophy and English at McGill University and went on to pursue further studies in English at Cambridge.

She has presented at a range of conferences and educational institutions.

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Ann Menard

Decoding the Modern Coffee – Cold Brew is the New Hot.

Ann Ménard is the Global Brand Communication and Beverage Insight Manager for Nestlé Professional, based in Switzerland.  She has more than 20 years’ experience in 360° customer & consumer insights and communication.

Ann has lived in several countries and worked in more than 40 countries around the world.  This global diversity has shaped her cultural understanding and sharpened her lens.  She has a passion for applied semiotics, in communication, user experience, and coffee machine design, as well as developing innovative tools to craft inspiring stories for both customers and consumers.

In her current role, Ann is responsible for global communication, identifying global trends and insights to shape the development of the innovation and beverage strategy for Nestlé Professional.

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