Firstly, I have to say that this New London Group article is one of my favourites in the MET!
Having worked briefly, and rather unsuccessfully, in the advertisement world as a jingle and music writer for TV commercials, I thought it would be interesting to explore my bag through the lens of product marketing. I initially wanted to explore the items through jingles and musical memes but that became rather difficult as not every brand has a music in their advertising. So I decided to move forward with slogans and catchphrases. I found that the article’s discussion of corporate culture and the required “assimilation to mainstream norms” within the model of fast capitalism has a sort of “kidding not kidding” vibe in that, at the end of the day, regardless as to how fun, vibrant, accepting, and collaborative the hierarchy of command is, at the end of the day the vast majority of corporations are responsible to share holders and market-driven forces (1996, pg. 66). I noticed this when I was exploring the websites, mission statements, and vision of various companies. I found these corporate structures are all trying really really hard to be seen as important, indispensable, and cross-culturally significant. When you’re looking for it, it’s almost comical. I can just imagine all the board meetings, corporate creatives, and jaded employees throwing their ideas out only to be rejected by brand managers who have no business running a creative department. I cannot imagine working in an industry where the culture requires workers to take themselves seriously while running focus groups to try “re-brand” with the feelings and language of “unity, pride, and stewardship” after a terrible scandal… I have however, worked on the music side of things and it is truly shocking why and how certain music gets chosen for ads.
With these corporate structures in mind, this mode-bending exercise is a good example of moving out of Critical Framing and into Transformed Practice – which involves deeper modes of semiotic exploration – specifically culture, connotation, and myth. Critical Framing asks the student to seek out socially, contextually, and culturally situated meanings of their learning. Similarly, James Gee would consider the corporate advertisement industry a “semiotic domain” and Critical Framing would be an integral part of the process of becoming a “producer”(Gee, 2005, pg. 15). Producers are those who engage in a particular social practice and “potentially make better consumers (2005, pg. 15). I found this task asking the why and how questions as opposed to the what. Why are these words used? What is this brand trying to communicate by incorporating this phrase?
I find this all very interesting in that a task about exploring what’s in your bag becomes an exploration of semiotic domains and the intersection of culture, individuality, corporate perception of individuality, and the consumer’s ability to choose particular products where the advertising may or may not effect the choice.
My question to you is: from all of the slogans that you heard, which one stood out to you most? Given our discussion on meaning making, why did it stand out to you?
References
Gee, James P. (2003). What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy. In C.M. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-design theories and models: Volume II (pp 13 – 49). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
The New London Group. (2010). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60–93. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u
