Éléments de sémiotique stratégique. La pertinence dans les portefeuilles de marque

Abstract

For many decades, semioticians have been interested in marketing. Their interest initially focused on advertisements and communication, but around the 1990s, it diversified with issues linked to consumption and branding. At that time, marketing was already focusing on brands with the development of brand architecture models, such as those by D.A. Aaker or J.-N. Kapferer. However, while the theoretical proposals of these two specialists continue to influence brand management practice, they are not sufficient to resolve certain ambiguities and tensions inherent in the development of strategic brand portfolios. The objective of this article is to propose a relevant way to build a brand portfolio, in line with the teachings of Greimas’ structural semiotics and Rastier’s interpretive semantics. To support this challenge, we will analyze the brand portfolio of the Farmer cereal brand owned by the Migros food group. More generally, this conceptual approach, which infuses marketing with semiotic considerations and models, also aims to institutionalize a field of contemporary semiotics, which could be conceived as “strategic semiotics”, namely a branch of Greimassian semiotics offering a theoretical, methodological, and practical apparatus to optimise strategic decisions in the field of brand management.