The Hidden Language of Semiotics in Retail
Announcer: You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast, where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now, here’s your host, Melina Palmer.
Melina Palmer: Hello, everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast. Have you ever walked into a store or picked up a product and instantly felt like you understood it, what it stood for, who it was for, whether it was you or not, without anyone saying a single word? That is the power of semiotics at work. Semiotics is the study of signs, symbols, and unconscious associations, how the things we see and experience send messages that shape our behavior. It’s a hidden language that’s working around us all the time, especially in retail. Whether you’re aware of it or not, your brand is communicating through semiotics every day. From packaging and store layout to fonts, colors, product placement, your customers are constantly interpreting signals. Understanding that system is key to being more brain friendly, more intentional, and ultimately more effective in your business. In today’s episode, which originally aired in 2022, I am joined by Dr. Rachel Lawes. Rachel is a social psychologist and one of the pioneers in commercial semiotics. She’s the author of Using Semiotics in Marketing and Using Semiotics in Retail, and she advises global brands on how to better communicate with consumers by tapping into this powerful, often invisible language. As you listen, consider this: What signals might your business be sending without realizing it? And what are your customers picking up as a result? For better or for worse. Really quickly, before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know, there are links in the show notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch, and more. It’s all within the app you’re listening to and at the brainybusiness.com 546. Now let’s jump right in.
An Introduction to Social Psychology and Semiotics
Melina Palmer: Hello. Dr. Rachel Lawes, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Hello. Thanks for inviting me.
Melina Palmer: Absolutely. I’m so excited to have you here. And we’re going to be talking all about semiotics. And as we get into that, though, you know, before we get there, I would love if you can, you know, tell the world listening a little bit about you and your background and how you got into the field.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Yeah, it’s a great question. I guess I started out. I started out a long time ago, but my career started out in academia. I’m a social psychologist. What you need to know about social psychologists, as opposed to other types of psychologists, is that we don’t spend that much time worrying about what’s inside people’s heads. You know, I’m certainly not clinical. I don’t do therapy. I don’t spend a lot of time speculating about how people’s brains are structured. As a social psychologist, we are all about relationships and how people communicate with each other. And, when I, so I did a PhD and then I moved, to London from the Midlands. London’s full of marketing people and advertising agencies and brand owners. And I started to supply this service, which is called semiotics, professionally because brands desperately want to be able to communicate with people, right? And that was what I was a specialist in, in how people make sense of the things that they say to each other, you know. So, I guess that’s what I started to do. So semiotics, how is that different from other sort of approaches to communication? So semiotics starts, I guess, starts out from the view that people usually in conversation with each other, just like the conversation that we’re having now, actively and cooperatively sort of build and construct versions of reality, you know. So even though you and I don’t know each other very well, in this conversation right now, we’re cooperatively together building a certain version of reality in which the world is like this. And we agree on that, right? And marketing is like X, Y and Z and there’s going to be shared references from pop culture that we both understand. So the overall approach is like that. And what’s special about semiotics is that it’s really good with not only words and how language works, but also it’s really good with, visual images and sounds and all that type of thing. And you will hear these referred to as semiotic signs. So what’s a semiotic sign? Well, I once had the privilege of being in, Chicago right at Christmas time. And it was the very first. It was snowing and it was beautiful on the Golden Mile in Chicago. And it was the very, very first time that I’d ever seen a Salvation army center outside of a department store. I knew that they existed, that people from Salvation army would ring bells outside the department stores at Christmas time because I’ve seen it on TV and in Hollywood movies. It was the first time I’d ever seen it in real life. And it was really quite emotional, packed quite a punch. So that right there, the bell ringing, the sound of the bell ringing, but also the sight of somebody dressed up in a Santa costume as a semiotic sign. The sound of the bell is a semiotic sign. The snow and all of that stuff. Of course, you know, in the United where I’m, I’m in London. Right. Our taxi drivers here are fond of saying that, this city was built for horses, not for cars. It’s very honest to see very narrow streets, as you know, because you’ve been here, right? Yeah, I was in Chicago. Like, in comparison, the streets were a mile wide. So even something like the width of the street can be a semiotic sign. And so semiotics is the study of how people interpret and make sense of signs. And, then I give advice to brand owners and advertisers on how they can build semiotic signs like wide streets and bells and scanner costumes into their marketing so that they can convey the desired sort of message with their brands. How’s that? Was that a good enough explanation?
Melina Palmer: Oh yeah. I love it. And don’t worry, listener, we’re going to be digging more in on the signs and symbols and things. And I know I had mentioned to Rachel, you know, in advance, like, is it going to be. Can I mention, Dan Brown? Are we going to be getting into weird stuff here? Because I know it’s more of like a pop culture version of this, but for anybody who does like the Da Vinci Code and angels and demons and all those in, this talk of, you know, Robert Langdon and those signs and symbols and how that helps him through, you know, journeying of solving stuff or any of these. Right. National treasure, all these, you know, understanding that sort of stuff in history is based, is. I don’t want to say basically what we’re talking about here. However, it’s like a pop culture version of helping us to be introduced of like, why this is going to be a super interesting conversation.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: I love pop culture. I think about pop culture all the time. I spend a lot of time on Reddit and Twitter and I love to know what’s going on. And whenever there’s something is trending or there’s a scandal breaking or so there’s, you know, huge Twitter pile on of the day. I always want to look at that because it’s almost full of semiotic signs all the time. Did you, just out of interest, did you follow that whole saga, last January with Gamestop, yeah, but.
Melina Palmer: Go ahead and elaborate because we don’t know when people will be listening to this, so.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The GameStop Story: A Semi-otic Case Study
Dr. Rachel Lawes: So let’s tell our listeners. So what happened folks, was that, so the stock market, it’s meant to be serious, right? So there’s rules that you’re supposed to follow, and that’s why we have hedge funds and people who are experts in wealth management and stuff like that. Right. It’s not for kids. Right. M. Except one day it was. And so I wrote about this in the, in my book, actually, which we can discuss. So there was and is this company called GameStop a fine company, with headquarters in Texas, and they are a retail chain that, sells video games, physical copies of video games and hardware, you know, the consoles and stuff. Right. And, people had been saying rather sort of, a bit meanly, that it was going to go the same way as Blockbuster, you know, because people download their video games now, there’s no need to buy a physical copy. The same with your hardware. You can just order it online. Right. If you’re lucky. Anyway, why would you need to go to a store?
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I don’t need to be sending out CDs of the podcast.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Exactly, exactly. So it seemed that, GameStop didn’t have a bright future, and, probably it would have been left to its own fate, except that, some hedge funds started to interfere in the situation by sorting the stock. And what I learned, what that means is that they were essentially placing bets that the business was going to fail. So if the business failed, they made money. Now, on Reddit, which is, everyone knows, is the center of the universe, sure. There’s a group there called, wallstreetbets, and it is a group subreddit for, people who are what’s called, casual retail investors. So they’re not, finance professionals. They’re just ordinary people, you know, kind of pizza delivery guys and, you know, mothers and ordinary working people. Right. Honest, good, honest working people who are not wealthy and don’t have MBAs and degrees in finance. Right. And when they found out what was going on with those hedge funds deliberately trying to, essentially deliberately trying to undermine a brand and a store which had been quite well loved amongst this group. Because let’s bear in mind there’s a big overlap between Reddit users and video gamers. Right. So they were not happy about this. And so, they kind of organized. I wanted. Well, I don’t. We have to be careful about this stuff because it’s kind of legal language but essentially by sheer coincidence, not in an organized way at all. We think millions of users and readers of Reddit went on the stock market and bought shares in GameStop with the result that by January of this year it was one of the most high ranking businesses in the world in terms of the value of its shares. I have to say that as well, at first I was just there to observe. You know, I just wanted to look as a researcher, which is what I am first and foremost before I give marketing advice to brands. I wanted to have the experience. And so after, at first, for the first couple of weeks I was just there to watch. After a couple of weeks I bought some shares because sometimes things are easier to understand if you’ve got skin in the game. But later it was the most fun I’ve had in 12 months. It was the most fun I’d had since the pandemic started. It was heart stoppingly exciting, right? Heart stopping. The exciting. So at the time that I joined when Wall street bets, when I joined it had 2 million members, which is already good, right? Within 10 days they got 9 million members, 9 million people posting every day. There was a euphoric atmosphere. People were saying that they’d never felt so alive that they could just have to boot up ready and I could feel the adrenaline kicking in. You know, people were absolutely drunk on this cocktail, a really powerful cocktail which consisted of a massive sense of humor, a sense of fellowship, amongst members of alternate bets and quite a strong sense of kind of sticking it to the man, you know, getting one over on these wealthy hedge funds that were callously trying to put a left company out of business. So we’re nearly a year on now and rather miraculously the GameStop shares have managed to retain most of their value. I’m certainly holding mine. And of course the Gamestop’s really happy. You know, they’ve got a new chief executive, Ryan Cohen, who’s doing great things. I believe they’ve just hired or poached even 250 employees from Amazon. And I’m, you know, I’m kind of optimistic for them and so are a lot of other people. So for me this was a huge good news story. But it was also the kind of thing that I take an interest in from a semiotics point of view because it’s a great story about business. It’s also a story about how people create meaning amongst themselves. So every single day on Wall street bets, do you know 9 million members in 10 days. That’s a lot of people who don’t know each other at all. And yet just really through the power of language and a few memes, there was a tangible sense of unity and fellowship and I want to say brotherhood amongst those people, mostly guys. Right. and you could really feel it. The air was absolutely thick with that. You know, most, most of my clients who are consumer facing brands in many different sectors would kill for customers to have even a fraction of that depth of feeling. You know, so this attracted my attention very much so. This is what I do. I just notice interesting things happening with brands and consumer culture and then I’ll go and track it down and find out what’s going on and where’s the, where’s the magic formula, so to speak. Then I help my clients to understand how that works so they can be as lucky as GameStop as.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, so with the GameStop story, there are quite a few things that I noted from the behavioral economics concept, behavioral science point of view. So we have herding there for sure. Right. So seeing that everyone else is doing something and the social proof that we want to jump on that as well, you get optimism bias of thinking you’re gonna win and the excitement with dopamine that you’re getting and anticipating if it’s going to work out well. You also have availability bias because you’re seeing it all over the place and so then you’re feeling like it’s much more popular than it is and then it becomes even more popular than it is. And I also made a note of in this episode is going to come out in February of 2022 for when your new book comes out. We’re recording at the end of 2021. And so in November of 2021 there will have been an episode that is on the Power of Us, which is an amazing book that came out in fall of 2021. but talking about how people collectively can come to make this grouping like you were talking about and to where we work together and feel like a part of the group. So I did mention a ton of episodes in there that are all past episodes of the podcast that will be linked for everyone to go back to. So to learn more about this amazing story. Definitely check that out.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Thank you.
Melina Palmer: And then what are then the semiotics that are involved there, that layer on top of that from the GameStop perspective.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: So what I noticed, amongst other things, one of the first things that I noticed when I started to hang out, on Wall Street Bets with Its population growing by the day. And again, we’re talking literally millions of people here. you cannot possibly have any relationship to each other apart from having jumped on the story, you know. and yet I noticed how quick everybody was to kind of use, the tools of language to create a sense of group identity. So, everybody referred to themselves as apes, men and women alike, the apes of. The apes of, wsb, right? And they also talked a lot about crayon eating. There was a lot of talk about, I’m so stupid that I eat crayons, right? And I’m a smooth, right? And it, it became these ideas about apes and crayon eating, spread through the group like wildfire. Everybody used it, you know, and it was a technique for creating a sense of unity amongst the, amongst the group. What was really special about it, what I really loved about it was this, because we were just talking just now about kind of irrational decisions and bias. You know, here’s what I think was really, what really amused me about the whole situation was that at the time, of course, because they caused up that havoc on the stock market. I mean, they managed, as far as I remember, they managed to bankrupt at least one hedge fund. So this had serious real world consequences, right? The hedge funds don’t expect to be bankrupted by gangs of marauding retail investors. So at, the time, it was getting a lot of attention in the financial press and finance journalists and people who got finance degrees were, all saying the same thing. They were saying, this is very risky. We’re very concerned, concerned. There’s a lot of people out there who can’t, haven’t got much money and can’t afford to lose it. They’re being, they’re jumping on this like lemmings jumping off the edge of a cliff and they’re going to lose all their money. And we’re very, very concerned. And that was the, that was that, that was the angle, you know, and, and the kind of beauty and genius of, of Wall street bets as a collective was that they were simply not playing by the same rules. In their view, any outcome was a good result. And this was completely beyond the grasp of the people who studied finance at university, though. Like, but wait, there’s rules. You’re supposed to buy low, sell high and make some money. That’s how you play the game. WSP were like, no, that’s how you play the game where there’s 9 million of us and we can play the game any way we want, you know. And so, There was. This was. What was really kind of revolutionary about their approach was that they were like, well, you know, on the one hand, there’s this huge appetite for, success and wealth. And people would say, like, we’re all going to the moon with Elon Musk. You know, at, the same time, there was people perfectly sanguine about the possibility of losing their money. And let’s not forget that we’re talking about retail investors here. Right. And most people actually were not investing their life savings. You’ve just got 9 million pizza delivery boys investing a couple of hundred dollars, you know. Right. A substantial amount, actually, if the way you earn a living is delivering pizza, but still not enough to screw up the rest of your life. Sure, they could afford to lose that, you know, which the hedge funds couldn’t, not in the billions of dollars that they were hemorrhaging, you know. And so it gave all straight bets, great, immunity, because they simply changed the rules of the game. They said, any outcome is a good outcome. And the stock market was not designed for that philosophy. And so it caused mayhem. And I kind of quite like a bit of mayhem because it reveals some new things that we haven’t seen before, you know.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. Interesting opportunities to study, for sure.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Yeah, definitely.
Semiotics in Practice: The “Jam of Death”
Melina Palmer: So, as we get into some other, you know, stories from the new book, of course, all would be fair game since this is your first time here on the brainy business. And so I know your first book is Semiotics in Marketing, which came out in March of 2020. Right. And then which, you know, amongst some other things that happened then, I can’t remember exactly what. And then, your new book, Semiotics in Retail, is coming out February 2022. And so I got an advanced copy, and I love it. And thank you so much for sharing. I’ve also. I’m like, deciding, like, maybe my PhD will be in semiotics. Like, what would that be?
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Oh, do it. Absolutely 100%.
Melina Palmer: Oh, I know. I’m. I’m excited. I’ve also been talking a lot with, the folks at Olson Saltman, and they do work with metaphor research. And so I’m like, oh, these. This area is so, I just think, amazingly fascinating. At the very beginning of Semiotics in Retail, you start off with a story about a jam, business. And I think it is such a fantastic example of how not thinking properly about semiotics can derail everything. And so can you share a little bit about that story?
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Yeah, I would love to. This was one of my Favorite projects. It was just a really small one as well. You know, it wasn’t like a worldwide study of 18 different brands. It was one store in one street in one country, you know, but owned by a large business. So whose, whose name we will. We will disguise.
Melina Palmer: Right?
Dr. Rachel Lawes: So it’s not to embarrass them.
Melina Palmer: Yep. We protect the innocent.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Exactly. So then this is a great example of exactly what I do. Right? Just on a small, small scale, you know. So this company, they make jam or preserve, as they might call it properly. And it’s very luxurious, product, right? It’s got loads. It’s got loads of fruit in it. It’s dense and thick, and it’s really luxurious stuff, right? And they do loads of flavors. And they’ve got a great, story to go along with the product about how it was rooted in sort of elegant European, history. And, they were selling the stuff online, of course, but they’d. They’d, invested quite a bit of money in renting a, physical store, right here in London, in one of the most historic bits of London. And you can imagine why they would do that, right? Because it just helped to kind of back up this brand story about European elegance and history and heritage and all that stuff. Right? So they knew they were trying to be dignified and, historical. And so they made some very kind of careful design decisions. You know, it’s hard to describe these things just verbally, without images, but let’s just say it didn’t look like Chuck E. Cheese. Not that. So nothing wrong with check E. Cheese. But it didn’t look like that, right. It was more, restrained. Right. More classical. They had a lot of black on the walls. And, they had the brand’s name just picked out in these really delicate, golden letters. Not too much gold, less is more, you know, that kind of approach. Nice creamy stone tiles on the floor. And these, various cabinets and shelves were all matching and were done in this, pale wood with these little brass details on the fittings, you know, and it was incredibly careful. And, outside the store in the window, they’d got, this interesting curved window outside, with some basically plinths with their, jars of jam sitting on these plinths to make them look special, which they did look special, you know, so it was all very careful, you know, shop fitting and design. The problem was it wasn’t. No one really wanted to go in there, never mind buy any jam. And my client was confused because it was such a good location. And it was a nice brand that people liked. So what’s wrong with this store? Why is it keeping people away? Right. So I said, can you go down there and have a look? This is the sort of thing that I have. This is what I do. You know, people call me up and say, we’re having a problem, we don’t know why. Could you go down and have a look? So I went down there with my camera to find out what was going on. And, I took a lot of photos. quite a hard. My spidey sense was tingling. You know, Melina, I had a feeling that there was something a bit off about this place. But I took a bunch of photos of this carefree design store. And then I went back to my desk and I asked myself a question, which is a central question in semiotics, which is, where have I seen this before? And you can often, if you’ve got a photo, you can often answer that question by just going and doing a bit of searching around on Google Images. What I learned when I looked at my photo set and asked myself, where have I seen this before? And verified it with an Internet search, was that, the whole place absolutely reeked of death. The whole store absolutely just had the stench of death all over it. Where were they going wrong? Well, firstly, it was reminiscent of a funeral parlor. Okay, so maybe your funeral parlors in the US are similar to the ones that we have in the uk So m. Often what we’ve got in the, British funeral parlour is that there will be. I noticed this with the, the window display that I was describing with the plants. So often a funeral parlor in this country, we all have like thick carpet, thick curtains. There’s no windows, no natural daylight such. Because you don’t want passersby coming and staring in at the. The scene, you know, and you’ll have like a central plinth and then your casket or your. Or whatever is containing the body will sit on top of that. Right. So they’d successfully created a funeral parlor in there in their exterior window, which was unfortunate. And then it just kind of got worse as you went into the store. So the jars of product, these lovely jars, but the exact type of urns that you would have at people’s ashes in the exact, exact shape. And they’ve got rows and rows and rows of these things nicely arranged on shelves on these. Remember, they’re using black wood shelves and very restrained decorations. There’s no, there’s nothing flowery about this store. It’s all Very somber and very restrained. And we’ve got rows and rows and rows of urns. So a useful word here that I don’t think my client had heard before is columbarium. So a useful word here that I don’t think my client had heard before is columbarium. So a columbarium is a word, is a word that means exactly that. It’s a. It’s a room which stores urns, funerary urns full of ashes, rows and rows and roads of them. So they created a columbarium in the store, you know, and then it just went. It just went on and on. It just went from bad to worse. Like those pale wood fittings that I mentioned with the little brass fixtures, funeral caskets. The exact. The exact wood exact fixtures. It was. Even the building itself was like a crypt. It had these low, they call trunty levered ceilings. Do you know the ones that are kind of like an arch, but it comes to a point at the top, you know, and the stone floor. So they’d managed to include in this one little tiny store, they’d managed to design in a funeral parlor, ah, crematorium, a columbarium and some on some caskets. It was horrific. Even their staff were wearing black suits like undertakers. I had. I just went back to the client and showed them these two sets of photos side by side. The ones are taken and the ones that I collected. I was like, what’s going on? Why have we got Jam of Death, Shop of Death? I kind of feel like this might be putting off people buying food. They were like, oh, yeah. Pretty soon after that, we fixed it, you know, and, I said, look, if you want to tell a story about old historical Europe, there are so many better ways to do that. You know, it was. Some of it was very decorative and colorful and, you know, people in the 18th century used to do interesting things with pastry and make beautiful sculptures with pastry, with flowers and birds and all those things. And people wore beautiful floral textiles and it was already fresh.
Melina Palmer: Right. And wallpapers and.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Ah, exactly. So we sorted it out for them. In the end, that’s it. I’d say I triple shoot things like that. If you’ve got something that is. It’s not selling as well as you expected it to, or it seems to do okay in one country but not the next one, or even if you’re trying to launch a new brand and you just really don’t even know where to start, I’m a really good person to talk to because I can see how to convey messages to the public that they’re going to enjoy.
Melina Palmer: Right And I think anybody listening to. And I love the way you introduce this in the book. And you did very similarly here is when you hear it all explained, like, that sounds classy, that sounds nice. I, Why wouldn’t people want this high quality jam, Right? And then you get the comparison, you go, oh, right, like I get it now. And you. So now we’re, you know, in retrospect, like them, Right? Like those silly people. I wouldn’t have made that mistake. But try to remember what, like, you know, before your curse of knowledge here, like when you didn’t know that you thought that sounded really classy. And the things that people could be doing in their own brands if they don’t take the time to think about that symbolism, how it ties in something, you know, where have I seen this before? Being an important question.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: It’s a hugely important question. And you know, it’s like if you’re, if you can’t afford to hire somebody to do semantics for you, but you want to design your own brands, then I need to say to people, try and trust your instincts. You know, if you’re looking at the shop that you’ve just designed or the market store or the flyer that you’ve just designed or whatever it may be, and it’s almost perfect, but there’s just something niggling at the back of your mind that’s making you feel a tiny little bit uncomfortable. You need to take that seriously and follow it up until you find out what it is. Hm. So that you don’t invest thousands of pounds or dollars in making a funeral parlor, a really nice funeral parlor, when what you were hoping for was to sell some jam. Because I’ve been selling funerals. It would have been amazing, you know, Right?
Melina Palmer: Yes. Now you know what to do for those clients when they come around and want to have inspiration.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: I haven’t yet found any funeral polls that look like sweet shops, you know.
Melina Palmer: Well, yeah, not yet.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: I will celebrate if I do find one.
Melina Palmer: Nice.
Understanding Brand Semiotics: Two Key Questions
Melina Palmer: So there are, I believe, 12 questions in the book that you say, you know, that you want to be asking. Is there another of them your kind of like a favorite question or one that has a really good lesson or story with it that you would want to share?
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Yeah. Let me think about it.
Melina Palmer: I know. I’m sure that you love all of them equally. Right. Because you work with them so much, but.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: So where have I seen this before? Is a favorite one because it’s one that my clients can start to use straight away. You know, I love to teach and I’m not, I mean, I wouldn’t like books if I wanted to keep this stuff to myself. Right. To share it with semiotics is a very shareable skill and it gives me a lot of pleasure to be able to share it with people. So this, ah, question, where have I seen this before? Is, very sort of user friendly for people who are beginning with semiotics, I suppose. Another one that I quite like that I use a lot is where there is choice, there is meaning. And so to quickly explain what that means, these are all these questions which you identify in, sort of Chapter 12 of my new book on retail. Those are the tools that I use every single day at work. Right. Where no matter what kind of a brand I happen to be thinking about, and I work in many different categories, there are certain sort of questions and prompts which I will use every single day. And these are some of them. So these prompts then. Where there is choice, there is meaning. What does that mean? So, I’m trying to think of an example that will sort of be relevant and not too controversial. Let’s talk about Donald Trump’s hair.
Melina Palmer: Yeah. Not too controversial. Yeah.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: So he’s kind of, it’s a particular color. It’s not white, is it? It’s got a kind of blonde tint to it, you know what I mean? It’s also not black and he’s not bald. Right, right. And he wears it in this kind of bouffant comb over. And so this phrase, where there is choice, there is meaning, reminds me that when it comes to Donald Trump’s hair, there’s two ways of looking at it. On the one hand, you could just say, well, that’s his hair. Nature designed it that way. Or you could say, well, no, Trump’s hair looks like that because he chose that. That’s what he chose. Right. He probably had it professionally styled.
Melina Palmer: Yes. Spends a lot of money for that weird hairstyle.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Spends a lot of money. Right. And he’s 100% in control of what color it is and what the style is and stuff like that. Right. So where there is choice, there is meaning. Donald Trump has styled and colored his hair in the exact way because it means something. So I guess we could leave it maybe to our listeners to figure out what it means, but just to offer a sort of few clues. Right. So the big kind of puffed up bouffant is a way of. A lot of older men do this, the big comb overs. It’s a sign of Youthful virility, isn’t it? It’s like, look, I’m not bald. Look how much hair I’ve still got, you know, look how vital I still am. you know, with this energetic kind of cloud of hair above his head, you know. But also it’s blonde. I have no idea whether that’s his natural colour at this, his age. He must surely be naturally grey by now, I would have thought. but he appears to die at this sort of blonde shade. And it’s as though to. I suppose, I can’t help thinking that he’s making a point about how white he is. You know, it’s not a hair color that’s shared with other ethnic groups, is that. And so. And once you move on from his hair, you start to get into the things like the permatum that he wears and his suits and stuff like that. So Trump, like every public figure, is, a collection of quite carefully curated semiotic signs, none of which are there by accident. and where there’s choice, there’s meaning. Right? So if he looks a certain way, it’s because he chose to, because he’s trying to tell you something. So my job is to figure out what people are trying to say, by the way, what we’re talking about hair. 100% certain that you’ve seen the, frankly, hilarious videos of Jeff Bezos and, Leonardo DiCaprio and, Bezos’s girlfriend. Have you seen this?
Melina Palmer: I haven’t, but, I’ll have to go check it out.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Oh, my Lord, you are in for such a treat. You are in for such a treat. So it was, I think the story just broke yesterday or something. It was like the most fun semiotic thing I’ve seen in a while. Okay? So listen, I’m an Amazon shopper like everybody else, okay? So I’m not in a position to kind of criticize Jeff, and I feel a bit sorry for him, actually. But here’s what happened. So Jeff’s girlfriend is a, TV personality whose name you might m. Recognize being on your side of the Atlantic. Lauren something. And, they were at, she and Jeff. She’s been his girlfriend for ages, Right. I think from since before when he used to be married to Mackenzie Scott. So Lawrence’s girlfriend now, You’re looking at those images, aren’t you? I can tell from your face. So they were an event. You need to watch the video because the video is unbelievable. Yeah, but him and his girlfriend are at this event and they meet with Leonardo, Dicaprio now at the time that this little five seconds of video is shot, DiCaprio happens to be standing on a kind of stage or a dais, so it makes him look about 6 foot foot taller than the pair of them. Right? So he’s. Right, he’s like a God, right. He’s already tall, so he’s broad. You know, he’s standing there staring down at those two miniature people. And Lauren, Business’s girlfriend, looks like she wants to climb Leonardo DiCaprio. Right. She’s thirsty. Does not really quite cover it. It’s like this is the most exciting and rousing thing that’s ever happened to her, you know. And, you know, I hear that he’s very popular and much popular with the ladies, so I don’t blame her, you know.
Melina Palmer: Yeah.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Then you’ve got, it’s a very striking image though, because then you’ve got Jeff standing next to her. And because of the way that this has happened with DiCaprio on this stage, Bezos comes up as really short and skinny and very bald. And he’s kind of. There’s some very fascinating photographs. The photographs are really of, ah, Lauren kind of gazing adoringly, DiCaprio and sort of thrusting her chest at him. But what really makes these photos special is Jeff Bezos in the foreground. A man who’s like the second richest guy in the world and kind of invincible, you know, and he’s kind of got his eyes closed. He sort of slightly turns away from the two of them. He’s like this to shield his own eyes from the scene that’s unfolding in front of him. Right? So it’s been much discussed on social media and all this kind of thing and everybody thought it was jolly funny, right? Because what’s more funny than when a billionaire has an embarrassing moment in public?
Melina Palmer: Right, yeah.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: many people commented on his appearance. You know, they said things like, Molly, at the end of the day, what they said what this, this photo in this 5 second video proves some guys, some men said this, I said it proves that no matter how much money you have, money will never trump good looks. You know, Bezos, second richest man in the world, DiCaprio worth a mere, 260 million if you’re interested. That’s what is nothing. Right. I’ve got that down the back of the sofa. So apparently DiCaprio is worth about. Let me get the, the numbers. Right.013 of what Jeff Blues losses were.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, so.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: So some men were like, well, this proves it. Fine. That settles the argument forever. You know what I mean? A lot of people, people commented, on, on, business appearance and said things like, well, you know, I never realized how short he was, although he’s not really that short in real life. And, they commented on his baldness. Now, he wouldn’t think that was relevant, so why bring it up? It’s relevant in the same way that Donald Trump’s hair is relevant. If Trump deliberately styles his hair so that he’s got the bouffons and, all this kind of vigor coming out of his scalp, then, Bezos, who knows if he chose to shave his hair off or not. Probably not. Right. Nonetheless, the surface of his head is just something else exciting.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, all the, all the things to keep in mind. I love that we, you know, so there was some of, specific, you know, so actual brands. We have some personal brands here that we talked about with those signs and symbols. And I know that I could definitely just talk to you all day about all the signs and things that exist. But of course, for everybody who is listening, they can just go pick up one of these two books that exists. Because, as I said, this is going to be coming out right after Semiotics in Retail comes out, and Semiotics and marketing already is into the world. So for everyone who is ready to go get their copies and to learn more from you or that want to work with you, we what are the best ways for them to get in touch and to learn more?
Conclusion and Call to Action
Dr. Rachel Lawes: All right, then, whether you’re a brand owner or you work in advertising, or if you’re just interested in humans doing crazy things, then, of course one place you can get my book is on Amazon. Sorry, Jeff. I’m really sorry I said all that until he cancels me. You can get this book on Amazon.com and around the world, or if you prefer, to shop elsewhere, you can purchase from all good local booksellers, or you could go online and buy direct from my publisher, which is koganpage.com that’s K-O G-A-N M P-A-E.com. you can buy it straight from there. And then if people want to, contact me personally, I’m on Twitter. I’m on LinkedIn as, Dr. Rachel Lawes. One word.
Melina Palmer: Perfect. All right, well, we will have those linked all in the show notes. And I believe also it’s Rachel lawsconsulting.com lawsconsulting.co.uk. yeah, see, Totally not what I said at all. So Laws been there.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: But lawsdash consulting.co.uk.
Melina Palmer: Perfect.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: But honestly, just googling my name is probably the easiest way to to find me.
Melina Palmer: Well, but we’ll also linked in the show notes so make it nice and easy for everybody. And now I have to go look at all the signs and symbols in my own life and see what my personal brand is saying.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Exactly. And come back and tell me about that. Right. And I’ll be able to tell you what they all mean.
Melina Palmer: Will do. Thanks so much for joining me. It was a lot of fun.
Dr. Rachel Lawes: Yeah, it was great. Thanks for having me on the show.
Melina Palmer: Thank you again to Dr. Rachel Lawes for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today’s conversation? For me, anytime I think of Rachel, I can’t help but remember the jam of death. It’s amazing how when decisions are made on their own, they can seem so nice, elegant even. But when put together, the symbology and the vibe can just be off. Even if you aren’t giving off crypt chic in your brand, there’s still something to learn. In this example, it’s a powerful reminder that every element of your brand speaks, even when you’re not speaking directly. Visual cues, sounds, textures, colors, they all matter. As Rachel said, asking, where have I seen this before? And really thoughtfully stepping back, considering it to help you spot unintended signals before they derail your customer experience is important. And if you can’t do that yourself, bringing someone in, whether it’s Rachel or me or anybody else, can be so helpful in finding something that might be outside of your realm of knowledge, but is quick for someone else to be able to know what’s wrong, before you invest too much money in it, and it derails your customer experience. This idea ties beautifully into some core themes of my books and what your customer wants and can’t tell you, as well as the truth about pricing, which are all about applying these insights from behavioral sciences and psychology into your brand experience and sales. So if today’s episode sparked curiosity for you, I highly recommend checking those out along with Rachel’s books. Of course, there are links in the show notes to make it easy. And you know, I’m curious now after hearing the examples from our conversation today. What’s one signal your brand might be sending, good or bad, that you hadn’t noticed before? And is there a brand out there that has always just. Just hit you wrong and you never really knew why, but maybe now you suddenly get it, like you have your own jam of death, whatever that is, I would love to hear about it. Come share them with me on social media. You’ll find me as the, Brainy Biz pretty much everywhere and as Melina Palmer on LinkedIn. There are links in the show notes to make it easy, as well as links for my top related past episodes and books, including Rachel’s Ways to Get in Touch and more. It’s all waiting for you in the app you’re listening to and at the brainybusiness.com 546. And thank you again to Dr. Rachel Lawes for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Thursday for another brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast where I sit down with Toby Stewart, author of the book Anointed. It’s going to be a lot of fun. You don’t want to miss it. Until then, thanks again again for listening and learning with me. And remember to be thoughtful.
Announcer: Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business Podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit the Brainy business dot com.
