Sign Value continued...

The sign value of the commodity gives a brandname its zip, its meaning. Over the years the cycle of this sign competition has begun to race along, while its density and intensity has escalated. We view advertising as a system of sign values. A sign value is generally equal to the desirability of an image. A sign value establishes the relative value of a brand where the functional difference between products is minimal. Contemporary ads operate on the premise that signifiers and signifieds that have been removed from context can be rejoined to other similarly abstracted signifiers and signifieds to build new signs of identity. This is the heart of the commodity sign machine. No cultural analysis of advertising today can ignore the mercurial process of recombining meaning systems in order to generate additional value and desirability for brandname commodities.

As a form of cultural production, advertisements redirect meaning systems to become a disposable economic resource. Day after day, ads combine and recombine signifiers and signifieds in an effort to define a sign currency that can be joined to commodities (products and services). It's a process geared to transferring meaning from one system [e.g., cowboys] to another [a brand name commodity -- Busch Beer]. Mechanically, an advertisement is a space where meaning is arranged so that transfers of meaning can take place. Advertisers try to steer these transfers to accomplish the transfer of value from one system [e.g., motherhood] to another [a brand name commodity]. They do not always succeed. And even when they do succeed, the cultural consequences of enacting these transfers of meaning do not end there, for they become another referential moment in what has become an unending chain of media-referential signification.

This means that advertisers must continually devise new approaches to devising differentiated sign values. Some advertisers construct signs that become more self-reflexive and derivative of media-referential jokes (e.g., Diesel) while others like Absolut have pursued minimalist approaches to applied semiotics to create visual puns. And Benetton created ads like this that were based on shock value. By contrast, campaigns like that of Sprite claim to challenge and debunk the premise of sign and image consumption. But in a world geared to the currency of appearances this is generally just another sign game to establish Sprite (or fill in the name of the next brand that mimics this strategy) as the sign of anti-image and anti-hype.