The Face of Semiotics at the Boot Shaped Peninsula

Semiotics and Qualitative studies tells us that consumers will have preconceived ideas about your brand based on their cultural surroundings, beliefs, attitudes and perceptions. What you believe your brand represents may differ to how it is received. As you can imagine it is therefore a mine field to try to establish how your brand should be designed and developed to get exactly the right category positioning.

It is not surprising then that a lot of brands play safe and follow the market leader, whether it be brand colours, imagery, signals or style. Subconsciously consumers do measure your brands against the top brands, usually the brands with the highest recall value.

Whilst looking on Design Week at the branding for new pizzeria chain Baffito’s I came across the strangest discovery and most absurd category signpost ever. A signpost that represents provenance, authenticity and heritage....

Can I introduce the mighty Moustache.

Globally as consumers we still like to typecast and pigeon hole. It seems that the Pizza category as a majority are happy to use the fat jovial chef with the handlebar moustache to represent all thats good about Pizza and the boot shape peninsula of Italy. We as a consumer buy into this. Even Baffitos with their contemporary design have kept the facial hair.

Surprisingly a few food brands that don't make pizza also appreciate the brand benefits of using the Moustache. Who'd have thought it.

check our Upton's Fanstaches

Forget Movember these brands are sporting the moustache all year round.
What other strange and wonderful category signposts are out there?

Looks like this fourth year student Alex Westgate may have noted the power of the Moustache too. Look at his wonderful conceptual work for a soda brand.

Stephen Wildish, a freelance illustrator, has created a wonderful identity for Money Runner, a 7 piece funk band.

I was in a bookshop last week (06/3/12) and came across this book by Stephen Clarke.