William Landell Mills
Founder, Amaranth Insight
Overview
We use both Qualitative Research and Semiotics to help Global Brands develop their Brand Positioning, Brand Architecture, Product Innovation, Pack Design and Brand Communications. We also write and develop creative imagery for concept development.
Services
Amaranth offers full service qualitative research around the world, both on line and face to face. We have a network of expert local partners who provide moderation and recruitment in all the main markets.
We also conduct Semiotic analyses of brands, categories (e.g. Tequila) and themes (e.g. Craftsmanship). Again we work with local experts where necessary.
We combine these two disciplines, usually starting with the Semiotic analysis. We use Semiotics as the basis for developing hypotheses and articulating them in visual/verbal concepts, which we we then explore with consumers.
We frequently integrate our work with quantitative colleagues to provide an integrated set of findings.
Much of our work relates to brand strategy, positioning and product design.
As well as quant researchers, we also work very closely with designers.
High points for us in the last six years have been working on the meaning of Pink, with implications for Gin, conducting a combined semiotic/social media study on the image of Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May, presented at the Esomar Global Conference, understanding the deep structure of Kids films to help the development of a toilet paper brand and understanding the meanings of Tequila in relation to Mexican history and culture.
About
I founded Amaranth Insight after working for 20 years in both in boutique qual and global quant agencies. During that time I have always been interested in developing new approaches. At arnold+bolingbroke I developed ‘stream of consciousness’ interviewing as a qual/quant approach, which was adopted by Ford and Jaguar/Land Rover. At Synovate I developed ‘MindClouds’ which were adopted as the best practice comms method by SAB Miller. At Synovate I learned about Archetypes and the role of psychological needs and the role of metaphors in communication. At Kantar I was responsible for developing qual methodologies and became interested in Semiotics. I believe that qualitative and semiotics are two sides of the same coin. The data from consumer qual carries immediate meaning, but it is problematic due to the impulse people have to rationalise. In contrast, the meanings implicit within packs and ads are far less accessible but are more profound and unchanging. Since running my own company I have come to value the use of both projective based qual research and semiotics in combination.
