Reformulation of the question reduces the spectrum of what it embraces and reflects renunciations and choices about the scope of the research that will follow: it will not be a question of effects on audiences, but rather of the construction of possible effects. Approaching audiences would undoubtedly be exciting, but this is not the perspective chosen, as it would require other fields and theoretical approaches. On the other hand, the approach chosen promises particular attention to the representations of professionals and the connotations of social and cultural forms. The reduction also concerns the shift from the term “power” to “authority”. One is different from the other and encompasses it, as we will see later.
This comment on the question raised is not yet complete, however, because the terms chosen encourage, by their imprecision, continued reflection. How can speaking in the public space confer authority on brands? What is authority and how can we define the cultural to which I refer? The answer to these questions will be developed precisely by addressing the articulation of concepts throughout the book and beyond by showing how, in this context, they are constituted jointly.
But this presents some notable difficulties.
I.2.2. Position
The first difficulty lies in the complexity of each concept, which have been the subject of approaches by many authors, from various disciplines, over the centuries and decades. This wealth of work can be considered a godsend, but it makes it difficult to deal with concepts. There will therefore be no exhaustive point of view on each notion and their approach will be based on the need to show the links and the preferred perspective.
The perspective will be deliberately communicative, with a strong sensitivity to the semiotic and metamorphic aspects of communication, captured in context, because forms exist only in the socio-techno-economic processes that frame them, captured over time, but also in minds. The forms of communication are in fact the emanation of representations that are sometimes ambivalent, sometimes in confrontation, depending on the groups that generate, value, and mobilize them. The same form can be justified by speeches from very different, even antagonistic perspectives. Finally, this communicational perspective is part of a perspective that values the order of circulation and elaboration to the detriment of an essentialism of forms and representations. This fixing would have its virtues, especially operational, but it is not my objective, my approach being that of deconstruction and objectivity and not that of a particular constructivism for the benefit of an actor or overall an optimization of market activities.
On this subject, my purpose is not to improve the practices of market actors and the examples chosen are not because they are successes or failures; the examples are chosen according to their communicative density, because they seem to me to be emblematic of a particular phenomenon or process.
While the purpose is not to optimize, nor is it to denounce. Therefore, thanks to the comfort of freedom of speech allowed by university research, I will not be prevented from presenting the opportunities, and also the potential threats of practices that can weigh on social forms and collective representations.
While the purpose is not to optimize practices, this will not exclude a certain tribute to the inventiveness and deployment of tactical innovations demonstrated by professionals.
This partitioning of approaches and analytical intentions does not solve the question of the impurity that can be attributed to brand communication. It is central to the subject, insofar as cultural figurations are developed against a background of social reception of brands and, more broadly, of social functioning around brands that are very particular, evolving, variable according to individuals, and often linked to a vision of ambivalent commercial communication. This communication, which can annoy and assault, is often socially disqualified, thought of as impure, self-interested and venal, or even relegated to the oblivion of social value. It is also often praised for its ability to surprise, entertain and seduce.
In any case, it makes it possible to understand the complex and rarely working relationship between brand communication and culture and society.
I.2.3. The disgrace of commercial communication
This perceived impurity raises questions. In countries other than France, particularly English-speaking countries and Japan, it is not so significant, as the mass culture of which brand emanations are a part of has the reputation of being perceived in a more favorable and homogeneous way. In France, this continuum seems unevenly acceptable. It is undeniably linked to the representations that innervate our personal and collective encyclopedias. The view that we can take of hybridization phenomena only makes sense in terms of the production of categorizations. The categories to which we refer are thus structuring our vision of the world. As paradigms and patterns evolve, my way of observing may appear obsolete in some time, several years or decades, since our representations transform our opposition systems as practices evolve9.
The cultural figurations of brands that I will present are the result of a search for value and the intense and broad form of what Barthes (1991) described when he evoked advertising, the commercial motivation being “doubled by a much broader representation, since it makes the reader communicate with the major human themes” (author’s translation).
Like Greimas (1986) who made Judas an adjunct to the Gospel narrative, social disgrace is, in my view, an essential adjunct to commercial speech, condemned to regenerate itself by assimilating and recycling the criticism made of it.
This feature of advertising rhetoric has been observed by linguists and ICS researchers, including Adam, Berthelot-Guiet, Bonhomme and Lugrin. The degraded social reception of advertising, coupled with a certain vulgarity and invasive power, has led to changes in brand communication. In the collective book on unadvertization (Patrin-Leclère et al. 2014), this fundamental question of social criticism is addressed, and I recall it here, because it is necessary for the continuation of the subject and the understanding of the mechanisms at work in cultural figurations.
Commercial communication has been the subject of considerable suspicion for a very long time, whether it is emblematic advertising or the most spontaneous vernacular form: salespeople’s discourse. The scope of explanation varies according to whether the primacy of this mistrust is attributed to the rhetoric inherent in these messages, in which case Plato’s Gorgias constitutes a solid starting point with the criticism of sophists, ready to convince without their words being at the service of truth, or if trade itself, a vulgar and material activity opposed to the nobility of the spiritual, is favored as a starting point for mistrust, as denounced in particular in the biblical account of the famous parable of the merchants driven out of the temple.
In both cases, market rhetoric is opposed to fundamental values of societies – the truth and the sacred. This constitutive antinomy of representations of commercial communication has been found over the centuries and has been mentioned in many discourses: literature, media, songs, etc. (Martin 1992). Criticism has grown richer, it is multifaceted, coming from thinkers and researchers, especially those working on communication and mass culture, and also especially from “anti-marketing” political staff, or staff of associations. Criticism, originally philosophical and religious, has thus become political, sociological, and environmental over time. It crystallizes both the denunciation of a social and political system based on liberal ideology and consumer society and the denunciation of rhetoric that seeks to stigmatize and invade10. The most critical are those who lend it the most power, as a corollary to a perception of a target of potential passive and fragile consumers, easily destabilized and convinced by these discourses.
These criticisms have largely penetrated people’s minds and circulated in social spaces. They have come together with the development of skepticism among professionals, publicists, advertisers, and media specialists. Many actors were thus moved by an advertising that would no longer be sufficiently appreciated to be effective, by a saturation of the media that would lead to the wear and tear of the genre. Some have gone further