The visual rebirth of CEC Bank – a semiotic perspective Cover Image

The visual rebirth of CEC Bank – a semiotic perspective
The visual rebirth of CEC Bank – a semiotic perspective

Author(s): Paul Van den Hoven, Camelia-Mihaela Cmeciu
Subject(s): Social Sciences
Published by: Editura Comunicare.ro
Keywords: rebranding; formal and stylistic structures; conceptual blending; persuasion; CEC Bank

Summary/Abstract: Besides Dacia or Bucegi, we consider that CEC is another well-known Romanian brand which will mentally stir memories about communism. Bearing the burden of a political regime, CEC bank was forced to reinvent itself in order to survive. Our empirical data (a one-minute commercial – CEC rebranding) will be dealt within the frameworks of two theoretical backgrounds: On the one hand, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson’s formal and stylistic systems. The boxing match encompasses the narrative of the commercial and its chronological order of events is broken by some flashbacks which render the discrepancy between the screen time and story time. On the other hand, Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s notion of conceptual blending. Our analysis goes beyond a mere narrative structure of a boxing match and proves that the simplex blending corresponds with our intuition of strong conventionality of commercials.

  • Issue Year: XII/2010
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 113-120
  • Page Count: 8
  • Language: English