Semiotic Analysis of the “La Poste” advertising campaign

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report is about the study of the advertising campaigns of the French postal organization, “La Poste”. Since its first TV commercial as an autonomous organization in 1980’s, the organization has radically changed its advertising strategy adopting throughout the years new themes and concepts.
Thus this report aims firstly to provide relevant contextual information about the organization and unveil the reasons for selecting these particular texts. Secondly, an in-depth analysis of the adverts using a semiotic approach will be uncovered in order to highlight the evolution of the communication strategy. Thirdly, the last part of this report will tackle an evaluative discussion of the organization’s overall communication.
The research reveals that “La Poste” which is one of the leading companies operating in the public services changed several times the components of its brand identity before adopting a particular identity. The main reason of these modifications appears to be a continuous will of the organization to modernize its image and adapt to the new competitive environment.

Furthermore, the particular progress in the advertising campaign outlines three major tendencies which can be related with the organization’s historical evolution. Indeed, in the 1980’s the organization has just become independent from the Ministry of the Telecommunications. Its campaigns focused therefore to communicate on the corporate image. Then, in the 1990’s, the organization outlined its commercial feature and highlighted therefore its products and services and finally in the 2000’s, the organization developed its financial services which explained the total “restyle” of the brand.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 3

Section 1: Contextual information 4

1. Activities of “La Poste” 4 1.1 Mail 4 1.2 Parcels and Express delivery 4 1.3 Banking and financial services 4 1.4