Artificial Intelligence Meets Semiotics: Optimising Advertising Strategies across Cultures

Abstract The symbols have always been the most important means of communication, empowering emotional engaging. Product marketing has always been a central topic of research, while the digital advertising has increased its importance in the recent years, both being interested in conveying strategic messages in order to influence the consumers’ behaviour and to preserve the values of the society. Being now at the intersection of semiotics and technology, the artificial intelligence and the data analysis are becoming more relevant than ever in enhancing the personalisation of the messages. Semiotics, with all its elements ranging from colour, language, music to gestures, functions as a symbolic tool for communication, being a fundamental component of branding. In this study, we analysed the semiotic and rhetorical features that appear in meat-product commercials across Italy, Romania and the United Kingdom. The results revealed several cultural differences; the Romanian ads use more rhetorical devices, such as metaphors and antitheses, emphasising more on traditions and emotional appeal. The Italians are in favour of allusions nad metaphos, being more keen on happiness and innovation, while the British advertisements rely less on the figures of speech, but using a lot of humour and subtlety. In order to offer a profound indepth to our study, we made a bibliometric analysis of marketing, advertising and semiotics in the domain of meat-products, thus offering a framework on how the semiotic strategies can shape the consumers’ perception in the commercials across quite different cultural markets. Our findings lead to the idea that, in order to have an effective advertising, there have to be culturally-tailored semiotic strategies. With the advancing of digitalisation, the integration of semiotics in commercials with the help of AI-driven tools can help at tagetting more precisely the audience. Our research highlings the importance of balancing the technological innovation with the cultural awareness in order to ensure an ethical and effective advertising. By empowering semiotics, the brands can maintain authenticity in this rapidly-evolving digital era.