EBSC7310 Knowledge Block 4 Reflection

The readings carried out prior to this week's session felt like the most relevant and interesting for me as of yet. I focused solely on chapter five of our essential semiotic reading, which explained how to carry out top-down analyses. Even though I was understanding all the prior readings and terminology that came with semiotics, I encountered some doubts as to how I will personally carry out a semiotic analyses on my culture later on in the semester. Therefore, grasping topics like synchronic analysis and diachronic analysis within this chapter felt very fitting to the contents of the unit and definitely helped remove some of my hesitation towards the assignment.

Now the physical lecture itself had a different focus area, that of brand archetypes and brand building. Brand management is one of the main areas of my degree and I have always been very fascinated with the visuals of companies and what they represent. With that being said, this lecture was right down my alley. It was interesting to see the different examples everyone came up with for each of the 12 archetypes, some of them have never come to my mind beforehand. It made me truly think about what the brands I use represent and which category they fall into. Taking companies like Adobe and Nike, I quickly noticed that they fell into the creator and magician category respectively.

Moving on from brand archetypes we discussed the essential aspects of building a brand, from understanding what a product is to gaining insights on brand purposes. Even though many of us had covered this before, it is essential knowledge if you want to work in the industry, so it was good to revisit the topics and brush up any forgotten knowledge. More than just understanding what brand purpose is, we dived into the what / why / how. Many times this is referred to as 'The Golden Circle' and allows us to focus on how a brand chooses to portray themselves and more importantly why they choose to do so. At the end of the day, the brand purpose needs to be evident within every touchpoint of the consumer journey. This ensures that consumers see the true value of the brand and make thought out decisions about which brands to associate themselves with.

Even though this was a shorter lecture to usual, I felt that the content covered was useful and a good way to end our knowledge block sessions!