DJG BRAND STUDIO IS A BESPOKE BRANDING CONSULTANCY BASED IN PARIS.
I USE CULTURAL INSIGHTS AND SEMIOTICS
TO ENRICH
BRAND STRATEGY AND CONSUMER RESEARCH.
ABOUT
Dora Jurd de Girancourt
I’ve practiced brand strategy for 20 years in France, the USA, South Africa, and Morocco. I am a former brand strategist at TBWA Group and Grid Worldwide where I worked for world-renowned brands like Pernod Ricard, L’Oréal, Nestlé, SAB Miller, Old Mutual, Kellogg’s, etc. I also taught brand strategy and brand content in Morocco at ESCA École de Management.
In 2013, I earned a Master in Semiotics at Université Paris Cité which led me to practice semiotics in South Africa for Kantar Consulting and currently in France for foreign-based cultural insights consultancies.
DJG Brand Studio, based in Paris, offers hands-on semiotics and cultural insights to bring depth and perspective to brand strategy and consumer research.
WORK
I deliver cultural insights and hands-on semiotics to insights companies, brand consultancies, ad agencies, and brands.
I use a funnel approach - from a macro-socio trend analysis to a specific brand analysis - adaptable to your needs.
CULTURAL INSIGHTS
Brands are part of mass culture. Any brand is a cultural entity.
When you work on any strategic aspect of a brand - purpose, raison d’être, positioning, narrative, touchpoints - you first need to have a very clear understanding of its cultural context,
I’m here to help.
What do I mean by culture?
By culture, I mean the shared meaning people are currently sharing and have been sharing for years. This shared meaning consists of all rituals, myths, beliefs, and traditions, but also food, music, fashion, sport, movies, etc. It influences how we live, eat, interact, buy and aspire to. Brands need to tap into and shape this shared meaning to stay relevant.
Framework developed by Canadian anthropologist Grant McCracken.
Why is it important to analyse culture when you work on brand strategy?
A brand doesn’t act in a vacuum, nor its consumers, nor its prospects.
Both the brand and its consumers are part of a complex cultural context that shapes the way people act, eat, move, and live.
It’s essential to deeply understand what are the cultural forces at stake so that the brand:
- stays relevant as the world is constantly changing – by understanding the market, category and context, what is residual and what is emerging.
- anticipates change – by understanding weak signals and emerging trends that will shape tomorrow and building today the next way to communicate, activate and innovate.
Your needs
I want to stay a step ahead of the competition and understand what are the weak signals in my market.
What are the most emerging trends to take into account?
I want to better understand subcultures that are emerging in some consumer targets.
I want to reach a new consumer target and I want to deeply understand their culture and drivers.
I want to tackle a new geographical market and I want a deep understanding of its cultural forces.
I want to understand the codes at play in a specific category.
My offer
MACRO-SOCIO TREND
DECODER
- Decipher the evolution of macro socio-cultural tensions and energies that affect your brand.
- Recommendations on how your brand should use these energies to harness culture.
- Trend
- Cultural energies & tensions
ECOSYSTEM
DECODER
- Unpack the codes at play in your category or segment.
- Understand a specific consumer subculture and how it can impact your brand.
- Category decoder
- Consumer subculture decoder
My offer
MACRO-SOCIO TREND
DECODER
- Decipher the evolution of macro socio-cultural tensions and energies that affect your brand.
- Recommendations on how your brand should use these energies to harness culture.
- Trend
- Cultural energies & tensions
ECOSYSTEM
DECODER
- Unpack the codes at play in your category or segment.
- Understand a specific consumer subculture and how it can impact your brand.
- Category decoder
- Consumer subculture decoder
SEMIOTICS
Semiotics is the art of digging deep inside brand’s signs in order to extract the most impactful big ideas.
If you want to unveil the WHY of a brand beyond the WHAT you can get from classical consumer research methods,
I’m here to help.
What is semiotics?
Semiotics is a powerful strategic methodology that deeply analyses brands to make them more impactful.
The role of the semiotician is to analyse a large corpus of information on a brand (comms, ads, reports), to find patterns, to frame a problem, to reveal tensions and gaps, and ultimately to unveil growth opportunities for a brand and for its innovation pipeline.
Semiotics helps brands select their right cues to clearly communicate their positioning in a unique, compelling and culturally relevant way.
Your needs
I want to identify where the white spaces sit for a brand positioning or for a product innovation pipeline.
I want my brand to be more premium.
I want to reposition a brand in order to target a different audience.
I want someone to dig into all my brand content and communication to make an assessment and tell me what works well or not and why.
I want brief designers on a new brand look & feel.
My offer
BRAND DECODER
- Make a semiotic diagnosis of past and present brand communications: ads, brand content, packaging, websites, social media, etc.
- Make a brand positioning diagnosis in a specific market.
- Brand communication diagnosis
- Brand positioning diagnosis
BRAND RECODER
- Develop a new brand positioning using semiotic maps to identify white spaces and growth opportunities.
- Define the look & feel in words and iconography for products, services, brand places and campaigns.
- New brand positioning
- Look & feel recommendations
My offer
BRAND DECODER
- Make a semiotic diagnosis of past and present brand communications: ads, brand content, packaging, websites, social media, etc.
- Make a brand positioning diagnosis in a specific market.
- Brand communication diagnosis
- Brand positioning diagnosis
BRAND RECODER
- Develop a new brand positioning using semiotic maps to identify white spaces and growth opportunities.
- Define the look & feel in words and iconography for products, services, brand places and campaigns.
- New brand positioning
- Look & feel recommendations
THOUGHTS
How semiotics helps to choose a punchy product claim
Semiotics can help brands choose the proper claim for a product.
> Choosing the proper product’s claim is a challenging task. It’s very engaging and requires an extensive cultural and consumer understanding. Let’s consider a healthy food brand that needs to choose, for the launch of a probiotic-enriched product, an impactful product claim. Which words are they going to use? Gut health, digestive comfort or pre/pro/post biotics? Will they focus on the functional benefit, the feeling of comfort, or the ingredients’ specs?
> It depends on their targeted geographical market, their consumers’ expectations and the market’s socio-cultural understanding of health. And this is the job of semiotics to understand these cultural nuances to get the impactful claim that will win the game.
How second-hand platforms become real enabler brands that urge consumers to change in a positive and emotional way
Semiotics can help brands choose the proper claim for a product.
> Choosing the proper product’s claim is a challenging task. It’s very engaging and requires an extensive cultural and consumer understanding. Let’s consider a healthy food brand that needs to choose, for the launch of a probiotic-enriched product, an impactful product claim. Which words are they going to use? Gut health, digestive comfort or pre/pro/post biotics? Will they focus on the functional benefit, the feeling of comfort, or the ingredients’ specs?
> It depends on their targeted geographical market, their consumers’ expectations and the market’s socio-cultural understanding of health. And this is the job of semiotics to understand these cultural nuances to get the impactful claim that will win the game.
Setting the scene for filiation
In my opinion, this campaign is particularly inspiring for family businesses, as it presents the concept of filiation in a new light. Le Vieux Campeur, a historic French player in sports
The significance of the Louis Vuitton monogram
Have you ever wondered where the two main symbols of the Louis Vuitton monogram – the star and the flower- come from? It's a very well-kept secret, but one thing
Uncover skincare: when a Kenyan native brand uses South Korean advanced technology
The brand Uncover is the perfect alliance of South Korean technology and African ingredients, offering skincare products specifically tailored for African women.It leverages technology from South Korea, which is known
Whisky with a purpose
Rhino Whisky is a new South African brand of single malt whisky founded by two friends, Gerrit Wagener and Brin Kushner, who decided to create a whisky that would not
Yassir: the most valuable startup in North Africa
Founded in 2017 by Noureddine Tayebi, Yassir provides three basic services: transport, food and shopping delivery, and financial services.In Arabic, Yassir means “easy” and this is the reason for being
All-purpose products : a “less is more” growing trend in most African countries
Is it a sign of resilience against inflation that hardly hit some African countries? Is it a sign of growing eco-responsibility from brands and consumers? Maybe both.We’ve seen in Africa,
NEWS
A selection of my online coverage on semiotics, brand strategy, and family businesses.