Cultural Mediations of Brands

Introduction to Part 4

“It can be said that the fundamental character of the mythical concept is to be appropriate.”

(Barthes 1970)

The choice to observe initiatives combining brands and cultural devices is at the origin of an intuition and a bias. I have favored a communicative, cultural and, semiotic approach to marketing. This long-standing bias encourages the observation of the link between market practices and culture, in order to better understand the functioning and nature of consumption. The latter is grasped in this approach as a cultural activity crossed by economic, social and symbolic dynamics, manufactured and stimulated by a pragmatic approach to communication and culture. It is therefore not thought of as an activity of the consumer alone but rather as the result of multiple interactions: interactions between producers and consumers, producers and offer promoters, interactions between companies promoting offers and cultural actors.

The link between market practices and culture has never seemed so close to me as when we look at cultural brand mediations. Between social artifact and social activity, signs and sets of signs, the constitutive ambivalence of brands that appear to be active raises the question of their symbolic operability and status.

By choosing lands with a high cultural content, I have given myself the opportunity to answer this double question. I have privileged the observation of the factories of authority around brands, inherent to their epiphany ...