Blue Bottle Shoes

A case study prepared by Nada¨ge Depeux - Semiotician for Labbrand.

China is now the consumer market in the third largest bottled water in the world 1. With thousands of businesses, big and small, the production of bottled water and many brands displayed on shelves, that bottle of election is a daunting task for many consumers.

You can in this situation are found in China - in your quest for a simple bottle of water you are bombarded with many options. However, you always ended up choosing a brand and may even keep buying it without knowing what makes you buy that bottle of water on the other. In this case, you are living proof that the analysis semiotics can be used to develop efficient packaging, segmenting the market, or to identify potential areas of new product development.

Michael Levine, author of A World Brand, said: "In the image, as in magic, the effect is lost if the effort is visible" (Levine, 2003, p. 5). Therefore, the brand is in some respects quite semiotics, and the message for transmission using signs and symbols is crucial for effective branding.

Introduction to Semiotics
So what is semiotics? In other words, semiotics is a science that analyzes the signs and symbols, including their appearance, their meaning and impact of their message on people. Signs and symbols are the things that you can see. They can be regarded as codes with a meaning or message behind. Therefore, semiotics can be used to analyze anything from the police and pictures on the logo of a brand style of car driven by an Actor in a mobile advertising.

Interestingly, there are signs or symbols whose meaning we know without knowing that we know. Therefore, participants in focus groups can often tell you they love or hate a certain ad, but they can not tell you why. This is also why you will not confuse the men's room and ladies toilet, you know that blue pants or figurine cover plate door is the room the men, like shoes high heels, the color pink, or the silhouette skirt-wearing is the ladies' room.

Like many other things, signs and symbols to convey different messages in different cultures. For example, White Elephant is a brand of battery Chinese success, because the white elephant gave the impression of steady and solid China. Moreover, an elephant white, expensive possession in English, and appointing a White Elephant brand battery could be considered blasphemy in some cultures, the elephant worship. As you can see the signs and symbols are culturally relative and that must be taken into account when designing packaging and brand across cultures.

Semiotic analysis of bottled water in China

To search the brands of bottled water in China, analyzed Labbrand bottles and labels of 18 brands currently on the bottled water market using semiotic methods.

Because there are not many manufacturers can do to influence the taste, packaging design is essential for effective bottled water. Mountains, lakes, human figures, like, splashes of color and shapes and lines, can all be considered signs and symbols on packaging of bottled water. During the first research of this variety of signs, colors and shapes, the impression given is that beyond the common transparent bottle, no underlying organization or logic in this market.

Using semiotics, however, packages can be arranged according to their signs in two main poles. On the one hand, the global nature that says that water from a natural source and the other side is the pole of the industry, stressing that water should be controlled and modified to be intact and HEA.