Brand image re-revisited: a semiotic note on brand iconicity and brand symbols

What is it about?

The terms symbolic and iconic, symbols and icons, are often used inter-changeably in common parlance. In fact, the formal definition of ‘iconic’ does involve a symbolic dimension. In branding language, iconic has come to be associated with brands that are more than symbolic, or ultra-symbolic. The problem is that if these two terms may be and are used inter-changeably, then what is their difference? Semiotics, mainly of Peircean persuasion, come to the rescue of the perplexed, first by disambiguating the distinctive meaning of icon and symbol, and then by demonstrating that iconicity concerns an overarching process with different levels that concerns how structures of likeness and metaphorical relations are established, both between empirical concepts, as well as between empirical and abstract concepts. In between, it is shown that what are called symbols in reality constitute more or less conventionalized or coded signs. Thus, what is customarily called ‘brand symbols’ should be viewed as more or less conventional signs (from overcoded to undercoded) in a continuum of symbolicity, rather than be treated en masse as always already symbolic. The argumentation is exemplified through concrete brand cases.

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Why is it important?

This article poses a fundamental challenge to branding orthodoxies by disambiguating the precariously interchangeable employment of the key terms ‘symbol’ and ‘icon’. Instead of treating symbols as nouns that constitute the end-point of a conventionalization process, the analysis opens up the actual process of becoming-symbolic. In this manner, brand-owners are equipped to manage their brands more narrowly based on a life-cycle of symbolicity, rather than assuming from scratch that brands possess symbolic status.

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