The Other Half of The Equation: with Virginia Valentine

London in Prague is extremely pleased to welcome Virginia Valentine to Prague! Virginia Valentine pioneered the use of semiotics in UK market research. She is a fellow of the Market Research Society a multi-award winner and speaker at conferences worldwide. Virginia will lead us through a one day workshop on semiotics (19th of March 2009)

Consumer research explores and uncovers consumer insights: beliefs, feelings, needstates, brand relationships. But that is only half the story. Semiotics delivers the other half of the equation: essential insights about the cultural forces that drive these deep feelings – and how they are communicated through marketing messages. Perfect Crowd’s Semiotic Workshop shows you how the cultural other half works. How you can access the power of semiotics to decode brand messages - and then recode them in line with key cultural changes and consumer drives  

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN (the Agenda)

The 6 fundamental Techniques of semiotic analysis

• sign decoding)
• context interrogation
• metaphor mining
• code evolution tracking
• narrative analysis
• myth-making  

WHAT YOU’LL SEE UNDER THE SEMIOTIC MICOSCOPE

• The ‘hidden image’ of the consumer’
  
• Buried myths that connect with deep unconscious beliefs
  
• New emergent codes just coming over the future horizon  
  

WHEN? 19th of March 2009

WHERE? Long Tale Café, Osadní 35 www.longtalecafe.cz

HOW TO REGISTER? Write to info@londynvpraze.cz

2007 conference - on film

Still looking back: Greg's and John's presentations, 2007

Here are Greg Rowland's and John Kearon's presentation from the 2007 conference:

Greg Rowland Semiotics London in Prague 2007

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: perfectcrowd londoninprague)

John Kearon Creative Consumers London in Prague 2007

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: johnkearon londoninprague)

Looking back: London in Prague, 2007

This blog is a new home for London in Prague and place where we would like to keep the history of London in Prague...Here is a post written in 2007 about the 4 great speakers at the London in Prague 1st conference: 

"It doesn't matter how exciting a new technology is if it has no human relevance. And it is human relevance and appeal to our senses that distinguishes a winning product," says Richard Seymour and it is hard to add anything to that.

Greg Rowland's work has been a great source of inspiration for me. Encountering with Greg and semiotics was a bit shocking at first to the Eastern European and researcher in me. The Eastern European part of me, conditioned to believe that there are ideas and ideals set in stone and that "eternal truths" awaits to be discovered. The researcher in me was taught to believe that if you drill deep enough into the minds of people you will eventually discover the "truth". Semiotics helped me to see people and brands interacting in a way that is fluid, ever-changing and much more colorful and inspiring than the descriptions provided by traditional market research. This clip shows Greg Rowland exploring the world of "feminine intensity ":

John Kearon is a true innovator who re-defined the way in which online market research is conducted. Instead of taking the "pen and paper" questionnaires and throwing them on the internet, John approached online research using the nature of the internet as a medium for a different kind of interaction. The surveys that John designs are engaging and interactive, enabling the respondents to tag each other's answers, long before "delicious" was came about...

Matt Hart's role is crucial in the innovation process. Matt leads teams to use  raw materials - what we might call ‘sophisticated observations’ (generated by semiotics, ethnography or online research) - and trawl for productive insight, and then use this insight as a  inspiration for creative ideas.  The film here was created to support Matt's TV show called "Sick Day".  Matt uses the same principles he uses with people on the show that he does with companies. He forces us to think out of the box to a point when one starts to worry where it is all leading. But he brings us back, in surprising and elegant way, to the box - to the category, the brand and the business.

Matt Hart on "joining the conversation"

Here is a reflection by Matt Hart on this year "join the conversation" London in Prague conference (Matt did a great job facilitating the conference and workshop). Matt says on his blog:

so went the name of our conference - under the banner of ‘london in prague’, taking the innovation expertise of london on the road. this year we wanted more of a ‘workshop’ approach; a morning of insight from our invited speakers and then an afternoon of creative inspiration - using the 2.0 insights and generating ideas against the working brief of ‘water conservation’ in czech. even tho it was a big blue sky challenge, the teams did a great job applying the stimulus. we’re loading the ideas onto the site & 1 specific idea is being developed further to be launched. brilliant.

ps points for counting how many times I say ‘inspiring’