Brand Equity Planning with Structuralist Rhetorical Semiotics furnishes an innovative conceptual model and methodology for brand equity planning, with view to addressing a crucial gap in the existing marketing and semiotic literatures concerning how advertising multimodal textual elements may be transformed into brand associations, with an emphasis on rhetorical relata as modes of connectivity between a brand’s surface and depth grammar. The scope of this project is inter-disciplinary, spanning research areas such as brand equity, structuralist semiotics, textual semiotics, visual and film semiotics, multimodal rhetoric, Film theory, psychoanalysis. The proposed connectionist model of the brand trajectory of signification is operationalized through a methodological framework that encompasses a structuralist semiotic interpretative approach to the textual formation of brand equity, supported by quantitative content analysis with the aid of the software Atlas.ti and the application of multivariate mapping techniques.

This book seeks to outline a structuralist rhetorical semiotic approach to brand equity planning, with view to addressing a crucial gap in the existing consumer research and semiotic literature (and marketing/advertising practice alike), concerning how advertising textual expressive elements may be selected, how they may be transformed into brand elements and how brand elements may be transformed into brand associations as sources of sustainable brand equity. The focus lies in demonstrating the usefulness of structuralist rhetorical semiotics in the construction and ongoing management of brand associations as outcomes of sustainable brand equity. The culminating point of the research at hand consists in a rhetorical semiotic brand equity conceptual model, which will be complemented by a second volume, comprising a step-wise methodology for operationalizing the conceptual framework that is put forward in this book.

This paper furnishes a structuralist rhetorical semiotic conceptual framework for brand equity planning, while employing for exemplification purposes the advertising filmic text as key source of equity. The framework assumes as blueprint Greimas's model of the trajectory of signification. Structuralist operations and operations of rhetorical transformation are posited as the basis for the generation of brand associations. The conceptual model put forward challenges the Greimasian assumption that a depth semantic structure is reducible to a binarist rationale. A connectionist approach is adopted in demonstrating how the strata of a brand's trajectory of signification interact with view to generating brand associations.

This book was put together over the course of the past three years and is the outcome of the author's publications in the multimodal advertising rhetoric research field and projects that were undertaken with the employment of the //rhetor.dixit//(c) model. It features four chapters that span different, yet interlocking aspects of ad texts' multimodal rhetorical configuration and culminates in a practical guide for the analysis of the verbo-visual rhetorical structure of TV ad texts, based on the unique methodology of the //rhetor.dixit//(c) model on offer by //disruptiVesemiOtics//. //rhetor.dixit//: Understanding ad texts' rhetorical structure for differential figurative advantage neither seeks to cover exhaustively issues in any of the traditional fields of concern to the discipline of rhetoric (an impossible endeavor, indeed, within the contours of a single book), nor to address all issues on top of the current agenda in multimodal advertising rhetoric. Its mission is to present key facets of current research in multimodal advertising discourse, largely dispersed and spread out in multiple disciplines, including semiotics, in such a manner as to enable the reader to get to grips with the benefits that stem from employing a content analytic approach for the ongoing management of the modes of rhetorical configuration of advertising texts. The combination of an interpretivist approach with the methodical outlook yielded by content analysis affords to transform multimodal rhetorical analysis of advertising texts from a theoretical enterprise geared towards making sense of how meaning emerges through the figurative language of advertising to a systematic method for managing advertising textuality, in such a manner as to enable practitioners in marketing related disciplines (e.g., account planning, marketing research, brand management) to actively manage how brand meaning is generated through distinctive modes of rhetorical configuration. The managerial orientation of the //rhetor.dixit//(c) model is intended to enhance understanding as to how a brand's intellectual capital is configured and, moreover, to point to directions whereby what I call a brand's figurative first mover advantage and differential figurative advantages may be furnished to a brand's discourse. The systematic understanding of a brand's distinctive modes of rhetorical configuration is not just a 'nice-to-have' add-on in a metrics dashboard, but a prerequisite for managing brands as constellations of figurative elements and modes of connectivity among figurative elements, which are part and parcel of a brand's textual essence.