Fear appeals in marketing communications of banks and insurance companies in the continuum of dramatic-tragic situations: The Semiotic Perspective
Fear appeals in marketing communications of banks and insurance companies in the continuum of dramatic-tragic situations: The Semiotic Perspective

Summary/Abstract: The objective of the paper is to analyze from semiotic standpoint financial ads and other marketing communications, based on fear appeals, during an economic crisis. A matrix which combines content and formal (sign) elements, forms the semiotic perspectives on which the article draws the conclusions. The content (pragmatic) elements are the fear appeals. The formal elements are the different signs and semantic concepts by which admen express fear appeals in their dramatic and tragic hypostases. The analysed semiotic concepts used in advertising and other marketing communications are sign systems of body and face; stylistic figures (iconic comparison, iconic metaphors, iconic hyperbole, iconic opposition, iconic allusion); semantic concepts (redundancy and intertextuality) and, some syntactic concepts as context and Ambient. One of the main conclusions is that advertising and other marketing communications of some world companies are so developed and sophisticated that, for a proper analysis of their campaigns, new semiotic concepts may have to be introduced. The main paper's contribution to the existing semiotic literature is that any semiotic notion is not only an abstract phenomenon, but also a communicative approach or even communicative strategy. Communicators use these approaches actively and skilfully in the different communications, including advertising.

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