Code-X (19)

By: Joshua Glenn
July 11, 2014

british airways

Call this cultural code: British Process.

Definition: Process is to premium-ness as provenance is to luxury: Instead of gloating over a brand’s distinguished history and authentic pedigree, the brand geeks out over how brilliantly designed its product is… how painstaking its high-tech process. If the brand is British (or “British” in the case of British brands that have been acquired by non-British companies), all the better — because British boffins are (in America’s collective unconscious) perfectionists.

dyson

Notes on this code: Dyson, for example: The company’s founder is portrayed as a relentless, perfectionist genius. The brand’s communications foreground diagrams and cutaways.

dyson 2

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Codebreaking, Semiotics