Structures of brand and anti-brand meaning: A semiotic square analysis of reflexive consumption

In the post-modern society, consumers use and perform brand symbolism to understand and communicate complex meanings about the value, status and morality of commodity culture. These processes are especially visible in anti-branding movements where reflexive consumers organize to reject, protest and campaign against particular brand values, often by using other brands to devise and enact counter-brand strategies. Drawing on research on consumer resistance we identify the critical reflexive consumer caught in a paradoxical tension between anti-branding and branding structures. An analysis applying the semiotic square is presented to reveal the underlying logical structure of brand and anti-brand meaning for two brands: Blackspot by Adbusters and the tobacco brand with no name from the Danish company Mac Baren. Our analysis shows how strategic brand management has successfully incorporated and responded to anti-brand structures, and suggests some reasons why conventional anti-brand campaigning might not be effective. Beneath explicit articulations and intentions anti-brand logic actually affirms the centrality of brands and commodities in consumer culture.