Sarah J. S. Wilner

Objects of desire: the role of product design in revising contested cultural meanings

ABSTRACT We explore the link between product design and market legitimation by examining the evolution of a product market that has been shrouded by cultural taboo. Conducting media analysis and selected visual audits of sex toys over a recent 25-year period, we find that innovations in the design of these products – materials, form and function – can facilitate evolution of a mainstream market. Producers can facilitate legitimation by introducing innovative designs that significantly contradict existing cultural meanings associated with the category. Furthermore, when the aesthetic and functional aspects of a new product design are aligned with cultural norms, we find that mainstream media reframe the products in ways that signal social acceptance.

Tales of seduction and intrigue: design as narrative agent of brand revitalisation

ABSTRACT We explore the role of design in market performances by examining a case in which a shift in the zeitgeist threatened a flagship packaged good’s long-standing brand identity. In this instance, the destabilisation of brand identity and threats to brand equity arose when prevailing cultural narratives became significant enough to disrupt existing brand narratives. To investigate the impact of the changing cultural narratives, we present a modified brand genealogy, examining the iconic brand’s positioning in cultural context over time and culminating with the strategic response marketers made to ameliorate the unanticipated shift in their product’s connotations. In particular, we focus on the role of design as a mechanism for facilitating new associations and possible attributions about the brand in the face of semantic crisis. We offer an exploratory framework for the role design can play in rescripting marketplace narratives and propose a typology of possible outcomes that result in the course of marketers’ and consumers’ negotiation of their roles in market performance.

Lost in Translation: The Social Shaping of Marketing Messaging

Abstract Word of mouth marketing (WOMM) does not travel as unidirectionally and straight as previously assumed. Rather, consumers are active co-producers of value and translate and transform marketing meanings. Word of mouth resulting from marketing communications can be anything from euphoric to resistant, and the discourse evolving around a product seeding has a strong impact on how this product is perceived. As messages become translated into meaningful, communally shared material, particular cultural restraints cause possibilities open up, rules to become less constraining, and the principles and guidelines for successful social branding engagement to become much more about human relationships than one-way communication. Social brand engagement is a genuine, natural interconnection between brand mentions and consumer-to-consumer social experiences. Therefore, simply observing the reach and valence of product mentions is too short sighted. To effectively attain social brand engagement, promotions need to seem authentic and congruent with people, media, other content and the offline or online context. A deep analysis of what is going on in the prospective environment of a message to be seeded is a precondition for the optimal design of a WOMM campaign and the accurate interpretation of its success.