Just as small, pure-breed dogs like Chihuahuas and miniature pugs suggest wealth and manicured femininity, so pit bulls and Rottweilers indicate aggressive masculinity – animals refashioned as weapons, to intimidate or pre-empt attack. Context of course is everything – toy dogs signal party-girl affluence more keenly when peeking from the clasp of Paris Hilton’s handbag, fighting dogs hostility when tethered to a teenage boy by a metal leash. A beagle or a lurcher codes fox hunting more strongly when walked by a ruddy-faced white man in Barbour jacket and tweeds than by a black African grandmother; a Golden Retriever beside a young woman in dark glasses codes guide dog, where in the company of a family with young children it may not. Meaning derives not from an intrinsic quality of the animal, but from relationship and association – from the dog in relation to its handler in a specific environment, not from the dog alone.

These canine semiotics can be witnessed in – for example – recent campaigns by pet food brand Cesar, the emblematic West Highland White Terrier of which communicates many of the values of the brand. Small, neat, clean and cute, the Terrier codes lifestyle accessory and non-threatening companion – not (say) a weapon or a hunting tool. Cesar, the Terrier suggests, is a brand for those (women) for whom a dog is a friend, to be cherished and so fed accordingly. Correspondingly, Cesar’s advertising communications explicitly target (through the use of suitable actors and expensively decorated but unshared living spaces) a market of affluent, professional single women in their 20s and 30s – women for whom a dog is not only a pet but a friend, and (perhaps) a partner-substitute, too.

This particular webinar dealt with how consumer habits may be changing over the next five years. Alex was speaking with Alasdair Ross of The Economist, Nader Tavassoli of London Business School and Charles Randall of SAS. The video should start playing below.

This is the first of a series of free webinars in the run-up to The Big Rethink 2012 in March next year, where Alex will also be speaking. More news on that closer to the time.

To watch the broadcast live at 2pm UK time on Thursday October 6th, register at the event webpage.

Essentially Sweet Shoppe exposes the ways in which retailers can employ both online personal information about the individual visitor and combine that knowledge with choices made in the store/theatre moment, to create specific ideal products uniquely relevant to the character and personality of the individual consumer.

For Sweet Shoppe, Sign Salad offered semiotic insights to enable appropriate selection of chosen objects that represented the identities at the heart of the experience – objects representing ‘craft lux’, ‘scientific’ or ‘revivalist’ identities, and those representing ‘factual’, ‘storytelling’ and ‘peer-to-peer’ identities. In this way, it is possible to characterise the personality of the customer, according to which objects he or she chooses during the experience. These semiotically influenced choices lead to the creation of the ideal sweet for that individual customer.

A curated personal experience, Sweet Shoppe is now open and will continue until Friday 30th September. Sweet Shoppe is an appointment-only experience. Book your appointment with the Shoppe-keeper by emailing shoppekeeper@thefuturelaboratory.com or calling +44 (0)20 7186 0770.

It’s great to see that Russell Davies’s response to the paper that AMV submitted picked up on the importance of the cultural detail that we brought into our analysis:

“One of the great strengths of the paper is the way it encourages the reader to buy into the strategy by unpicking the semiotics of a motorcyclist’s visual identity. The fact they use Top Gun to do this only adds to the readability. Maverick and Goose have their names on their helmets and their faces are visible, in comparison to the MIG pilots who are faceless and therefore more disposable.”

Fingers crossed for the awards ceremony on the 6th October. In the meantime, see our case study of the project for more detail.

The ad seamlessly blends two usually separated themes: nostalgia and modernity. “Dad” sets up an email address, dear.hollie@gmail.com, and begins sending newborn daughter Hollie emails including pictures and video of her development over a seven-year period.

By imagining future Dad looking back to a present that is constantly evolving, the ad plays with time, showing Gmail as part of the (sentimental) past, the (immediate) present and the (nostalgic) future. In the real world, the present day is by definition not nostalgic, and symbols of modernity like email and social networking have little power to move us in the way birthday candles and baby photos can – symbols not only of the past but of our childhoods. By combining the two sets of codes, Google is charging its present-day product with nostalgic emotional power.

The ad also uses a third temporal perspective, by bringing together a series of moments from a long time period into a very short spot. In doing so, it codes online communication – and Google – not as transient or disposable, but as cumulative and durable. It implies Google is here to stay, a brand beyond time.

Watch the full ad at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5NKYKE6U2c.

Kuleshov made a short film featuring matinee idol Ivan Mozzhukhin in which Mozzhukhin’s expressionless face was intercut with various pieces of unrelated footage, including a bowl of soup, a woman, and a little girl in a coffin. When the film was shown to an audience, they reported feeling that the man was reacting with ‘hunger’ (when shown along with the soup), ‘desire’ (when shown with the woman) and ‘grief’ (when shown with the little girl). In fact, the footage of Mozzhukhin’s face was the same piece repeated over and over. Kuleshov’s collaborator Vsevolod Pudovkin described in 1929 how the audience “raved about the acting… the heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead child, and noted the lust with which he observed the woman. But we knew that in all three cases the face was exactly the same.”

The so-called Kuleshov Effect has been used in film studies ever since to point up the crucial role of editing, since it demonstrates that the human mind will often instinctively construct a relationship between two disparate images even when none exists – especially when a human agent is portrayed. So the precise order that film segments are arranged in the timeline is critical in how the meaning of the story will be perceived by the viewer.

Brand identity relies on this associationist tendency in people’s minds. Ed Miliband’s now infamous ‘looped’ responses to several very different questions put by ITN’s Damon Green in July 2011 was not the only piece of artifice at play that day. According to Green, Miliband’s PR handlers insisted he be shot “in front of his bookcase, with his family photos over his left shoulder”. Green also notes that Prime Minister David Cameron’s handlers “never let him be filmed in front of anything expensive, ornate, or strikingly Etonian”.

These behind-the-scenes organisers understand how subtle cues can unconsciously colour public perception of their man. Both show the principle of unconscious conflation that can be made between person and object, virtually regardless of the actual relationship.

Another instance of the same principle, this time more consciously apprehended by audience members, is the now routine staging of presidential announcements in the US. Jon Huntsman, announcing his bid in June 2011 for the Republican nomination, stood with the Stars and Stripes and the Statue of Liberty in plain view.

Whether such a rightwing political figure really stands for universal liberty and for (all) the people of the United States is open to debate, but the intention is clear: Huntsman and ‘America’ have an intimate relationship with one another.

One can only imagine the effect to brand Huntsman if an art terrorist had managed to stick an image of an alluring woman on the front of the lectern during the speech, or mounted a sculpture of a bowl of soup in the right hand of Libertas.

But there have been problems. What I had been taking for stunned admiration for my sartorial daring and panache turned out to be more usually – though not always, I am sure – some form of what the officer called ‘utter terror’. So I took my psychiatrist’s advice and started experimenting with different colours.

Blue and green didn’t make much of a difference. Red and white made people think for a bit; but still not much change. It was only when I started wearing a pink one that looks of horror began turning to looks of quizzical fascination, even delight! My yellow and purple polka dot number has become quite a hit locally, and passers by have taken to loudly calling me Wayne Car, whom I can only imagine is a new enfant terrible of the fashion design world.

Take it from an expert: whatever your predilection, be sure to think deeply about the livery you adopt.