Constructing and Disputing Brand National Identity in Marketing Discourse

Constructing and Disputing
Brand National Identity

in Marketing Discourse
Helen Kelly-Holmes, University of Limerick
ABSTRACT
Country-of-origin appeals create national identities for brands, thereby exploiting positive
country-specic expertise. As a result of such marketing discourses, which utilize essen-
tialized territory-language linkages, such practices become enregistered for consumers,
and these linguistic fetishes are available as semiotic resources for the national identity
branding of products. Contemporary consumers can play a role in creating, maintaining,
and possibly challenging the national identity branding of products. This article reports on a
recent campaign by brewer Stella Artois that used French to emphasize the brands Belgian
origins and on consumers disputing this usage in a discussion of the campaign on YouTube.
The case illustrates the stability of the semiotic resources of national identity branding and
who is and is not allowed to use them and for which purposes. This becomes apparent when
transgressing these unwritten rules is sanctioned by the audience for the ad, who seek
restoration of predictability and stability in relation to borders and branding.
W
hile essentialized discourses around language and national identity
are increasingly subject to challenge and critique, marketing dis-
course, like many other corporate and institutional discourses, per-
sists in a strict alignment of language and identity Blommaert 2015. One way
in which this happens is through the exploitation of country-of-origin appeals,
as a means of differentiating a product, by drawing attention to an essentialized
and unproblematized link between language and nation. Country-of-origin
appeals rely for their success on a certain level of consumer ethnocentrism.
Through such country-of-origin appeals, certain scopic regimes Jay 1988,
Contact Helen Kelly-Holmes at Centre for Applied Language Studies, School of Modern Languages and
Applied Linguistics, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland helen.kelly.holmes@ul.ie.
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Peripheral Multilingualism project PI, professor
Sari Pietikinen, funded by the Academy of Finland 201215.
Signs and Society, vol. 4, no. S1 (Supplement 2016). 2016 Semiosis Research Center at Hankuk University of
Foreign Studies. All rights reserved. 2326-4489/2016/04S1-0003$10.00
S51
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S52 Signs and Society
ways of seeing and hearing foreign languages, can become enregistered Agha
2003 for the target audience and are thus available to be utilized as a semiotic
resource for attaching a national identity to a brand.
In the current era of marketing communication, however, the discourse of
country-of-origin branding is not just one-way and needs to be broadened to
include the role of consumers. Co-construction is one of the key concepts and
buzzwords on which contemporary marketing is built. In the current context,
which is understood as dialogic, value is seen as a two-way, co-constructed
process between the brand/company and the consumer Pongsakornrungsilp
and Schroeder 2011, 305. Brands and companies rely on consumers to do a lot
of the work in creating, narrating, and adding value to products. However, while
this new paradigm has clear advantages for companies in the form of working
consumers gifting their labor, there are also potential problems, particularly in
a context where bottom-up and do-it-yourself discourses have the potential to
reach wide audiences via Web 2.0. Thus, while a brand may be positioned in a
certain way through the exploitation of a language-territory link in an adver-
tising text, this may be accepted and conrmed but also challenged by con-
sumers. Contemporary marketing theory understands both of these processes as
adding to and/or taking away from the value of the brand and being part of the
dialogic nature of marketing.
This article reports on one such case in which the country-of-origin appeal
created for the Stella Artois cider brand through a high-end marketing campaign
is disputed by the consumers who are the target of this campaign. We begin
by looking at the marketing discourse upon which the use of this essentialized
country-language link is based, namely, the idea of country of origin as a tactic
for branding. We then move on to discuss the role of language as a semiotic
resource in country-of-origin branding, focusing in particular on the notion of
linguistic fetish as a way of explaining how specic ways of seeing and hearing
foreign languages become enregistered. Following this, we examine the case
of the Stella Artois Cest Cidre campaign and its discussion on YouTube, pay-
ing attention to the discourses that emerge, before drawing some conclusions
about what this particular case tells us in terms of the semiotics of nation
branding.
Country-of-Origin Appeals in Marketing

Country of origin is one of the most researched aspects of international mar-
keting and a well-established technique for differentiating products. It is con-
sidered one of the extrinsic or intangible features of a productlike brand or

Brand National Identity in Marketing Discourse S53
pricethat can be easily manipulated and altered without changing the basic or
physical attributes of the product Pharr 2005, 37. Marketing research shows
that the concept of country of origin is complex and encompasses symbolic and
emotional components as well as cognition Pharr 2005, 36. A country-of-origin
appeal highlights positive and normally stereotypical attributes of another country
and imbues the product originating from that country with those image-enhancing
qualities Moon and Jain 2002, 93. Furthermore, the combination of hu-
morous stereotyping with an allusion to a particular expertise which is associ-
ated with the foreign country Moon and Jain 2002, 93 has been shown to
instill condence in a product.
A signicant variable when evaluating country-of-origin effects is consumer
ethnocentrism, a term coined by Shimp and Sharma 1987. Consumer ethno-
centrism correlates positively with patriotism, politico-economic conservatism
and dogmatism but negatively with cultural openness Moon and Jain 2002, 94.
It is understood as providing the consumer with a sense of identity, feelings of
belonging, and, most importantly, an understanding of what purchase behaviour
is acceptable or unacceptable to the in group Shimp and Sharma 1987, 280.
Levels of consumer ethnocentrism have been shown to have a strong and sig-
nicant effect on country of origin appeals, with country-specic animosity
and stereotypes also playing important roles Pharr 2005, 36. Consumer eth-
nocentrism is frequently seen as a barrier to country of originbased advertising
appeals in the marketing and advertising literature, particularly in terms of beliefs
by consumers regarding the appropriateness and morality of purchasing foreign-
made products Moon and Jain 2002, 94. However, as we shall see below, much
of the marketing of foreign products and the use of foreign languages in mar-
keting is in fact posited on an ethnocentric appeal, with many of the campaigns
being designed in the target audience country and having nothing to do with
the country of origin, the country in question being framed entirely from an
ethnocentric viewpoint.
Finally, in an increasingly globalized, postnational marketplace, many mar-
keting theorists have begun to question the continuing salience of country of
origin as an advertising appeal. Products, like people, can now have hybrid
identities and origins, as a result of the offshoring of production: products with
multi-country afliation question the role and relevance of the construct of
country-of-origin Phau and Prendergast 2000, 160. A whole range of new
categorizations has been developed to reect new complexities in global product
operations including country of parts, country of design, country of assembly,
and country of manufacture Pharr 2005, 34. The current era of globalization

and blurred borders has the potential to both obscure and also exaggerate
country-of-origin effects Phau and Prendergast 2000. Consequently, a more
robust concept of country of brand is increasingly being preferred in order to
allow for continuity in the country association even where there is a change in the
manufacturing location of the brand. So long as a brand is consistently identied
with a particular country, then just being produced in another country cannot
eliminate the effects of a strong country association Phau and Prendergast
2000, 14. So, we can see how appeals can simultaneously exaggerate the origin
of the brand while at the same time obscuring or masking the actual origin of
the product.
As argued earlier, the construction of country-of-origin appeals needs to be
broadened to incorporate the role of consumption, reecting a philosophical
change in the marketing concept of the consumer. This involves a shift from
the perception of the consumer as the passive recipient of marketing messages to
the reconceptualization of the consumer as not just an active participant in the
marketing communication, but as an equal cocreator. Co-construction, as stated
earlier, refers to the processes by which both consumers and producers collab-
orate, or otherwise participate, in creating value. Thus, we now talk of working
consumers, co-production, prosumption, consumer empowerment, consumer
resistance, consumer agency, and consumer tribes Pongsakornrungsilp and
Schroeder 2011, 304. Alongside this there has been a deconstruction of the very
concept of value, and a subsequent repositioning of value as something complex
and multidimensional 305, in opposition to its previous narrow meaning as
something understood in functional or economic terms. Thus, consumers, by
gifting their labor in both formal and informal brand communities and by the
work they do in using products, create value not just for the brand or product
but also for themselves and their peers in terms of individual identity work.
Linguistic Fetish and Country-of-Origin Advertising

One of the primary semiotic resources in indexing country of origin and
building a positive association is language. The concept is not a new one. The
notion of terroir, for example, is well established in relation to French agri-
business and the marketing of foods. In such a system, the localness and origin of
the product are part of its essence, and the territorial anchoring of the brand is a
semiotic resource that differentiates it from a product from another location see,
e.g., Barham 2003. Companies and brands often make use of language in order to
index place in an attempt to link a brand or product to that particular place and
simultaneously exploit associated second- and third-order meanings in relation to

these particular places. So, for example, French is used to create associations of
beauty and fashion, and German to evoke efcient engineering Kelly-Holmes 2000,
2005; Hornikx, Van Meurs, and Starren 2007, while English may be used to
evoke Americana Martin 2002, 2006 or any range of modern associations for
products cf. Bhatia 2001, 2007; Piller 2001, 2003; Baumgardner 2006; Lee 2006;
Ustinova 2006; Kasanga 2010. Concepts such as impersonal bilingualism
Haarmann 1989, language display Eastman and Stein 1993, and linguistic
fetish Kelly-Holmes 2005, 2014 have been used to describe this phenome-
non. The language or accent used in the advertising is often a foreign one in
the context of the target advertisees and so is not a representation of every-
day, lived bi- and multilingualism in that cultural context, though it should
be noted that these concepts have been used to explore bi- and multilingual
advertising to bilinguals e.g., Santello 2015 and advertising in complex mul-
tilingual situations involving minority languages Coupland 2012, English as a
second language Bhatia 2007, and accent OSullivan 2013.
Furthermore, while symbolic and communicative functions of language
are of course always linked in any utterance e.g., Bourdieu 1991, in the use of
foreign languages in advertising, the symbolic functioning of the foreign lan-
guage or accent is generally more important than its communicative function.
Thus, the foreign or other language is frequently used for decorative e.g., vi-
sual or aural effect, while the dominant domestic language is used for impart-
ing important information or instructions in relation to the brand or product.1
Such practices can be understood as a type of fetish, described as the
capacity of creating symbolic valuea value greater than it contains Marx
1867 1954, 392, and may involve form without content 393 or a prioritizing
of form over meaning. Linguistic fetish emphasizes the symbolic valuefor ex-
ample, the visual or aural characteristicsof a piece of language over the
communicative value. We can see the symbolic value of a piece of foreign
language as the product of existing linguistic hierarchies and regimes, ways of
seeing the language or scopic regimes around the other linguistic culture in-
volved see Kelly-Holmes 2014 for a full discussion.
Linguistic fetish involves a culturally determined lens, constructed by the
producers perception of the consumers own linguistic culture or habitus, as
1. See, e.g., Grin 1997 on the use of English in advertising in Poland; Gerritsen et al. 2000 on the use
of English in Dutch commercials; Piller 2001 on multilingualism in German advertising; Alm 2003 on the
use of English in advertising in Ecuador; Hornikx, Van Meurs, and Starren 2007 on the use of French,
German, and Spanish in Dutch advertising; Kasanga 2010 on the use of English in advertising in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo; Garca Vicano 2011 on the use of English, French, and Italian in the
Spanish airline Vuelings advertising; and Santello 2013 on the use of Italian in Australian advertising.

visuality is inducted into the service of creating a homogenous cultural per-

spective de Burgh-Woodman and Brace-Govan 2010, 177. The linguistic
choices in the relevant advertising texts are mainly determined by how the
foreign word looks or sounds and by the second- and third-order associations
the foreign word may have among target addressees. Haarman 1989 used the
phrase impersonal bilingualism to describe the appearance of foreign words
in Japanese advertising, having concluded that their usage had nothing to do
with everyday or real bi- and/or multilingualism in Japanwhich was in
his view at the time a highly monolingual country. He argued that they were
rather driven by a desire to exploit symbolic second- and third-order associations
of these languages, which were not widely understood or taught in Japan at the
time of his study in the 1980s.
Linguistic fetish can also manifest itself in the use of the national/ofcial lan-
guage of the target audience, spoken or written in a foreign accentfor ex-
ample, English being spoken in a French or German accent in an advertise-
ment targeted at a UK audience Kelly-Holmes 2005. It can be argued that
this way of speaking becomes enregistered Agha 2003; Johnstone 2009, 2011
for the audience. This means that this linguistic varietyhyperbolized, foreign-
accented English with a few words of token French or Germanbecomes ideo-
logically linked with a social or, in this case, cultural or national identity
Johnstone 2011, 657. A necessary part of the enregisterment process is that
people show each other how to make this linkage and what the correct linkage
is. In the case of linguistic fetish and country-of-origin branding strategies,
advertising and marketing discourses clearly have a key role to play in this show-
ing and linking. It can be argued that this foreign language fetish is a variety and
the key way of indexing foreignness mainly as a result of advertising and other
media discourses, and it is available as a semiotic resource for advertisers to use
in order to attach a brand to a particular foreign national identity.
Three components need to be in place for this type of advertising strategy:
there must be a strong, established, or commonsensical link between the brand
and its country of origin which builds on previous country-of-origin campaigns;
there must be an established, essential link between the language exploited and
that particular country of origin; and both of these must be agged and reinforced
in the advertising campaign.
Constructing Stella Artoiss National Identitythe Campaign

Stella Artois is a well-known brand of lager across Europe. Although the
brands origins are in the Belgian city of Leuven, it is owned by the leading in-

ternational brewery company, Anheuser Busch InBev, the largest brewing cor-
poration in the world with a 25 percent share of the global market and a port-
folio that includes brands of beer such as Budweiser American and Becks
German. The global extent of the parent company and its ownership of com-
peting brands with equally strong national identities are of course never referred
to in advertising for Stella Artois. Country of origin is thus a tactic that can be
used to mask the transnational or global ownership by holding companies and
conglomerates of a brand, which might otherwise clash with the brands exploita-
tion of local or national identity Kelly-Holmes 2005; Usunier 2006. While brew-
ing continues in the historic site of origin, Flanders in Belgium, and the brand is
constructed as Belgian or at least continental/European see below, the beer is
also brewed in the United Kingdom, other parts of Europe, Australia, and Brazil.
The company history narrative on the Stella Artois website exploits a dis-
course of country of origin in relation to the brands Belgian identity. The lexis
of an essentialized identity discourse roots, origins, tradition, founded, foun-
dations, and history dominates the text:
At Stella Artois, we are extremely proud of our Belgian roots. Our story
can be seen on every bottle of Stella Artois. If you look closely, hints of
our origins are proudly displayed.
By 1366 roots of our brewing tradition had been established in the city
of Leuven, Belgiumwhich is also where the original Den Hoorn brew-
ery was founded. Den Hoorn laid the foundation for the quality taste and
standard Stella Artois is known for. The symbol of the Den Hoorn Brewery
is proudly displayed in Stella Artois cartouche to this day.
Sebastian Artois was admitted to the Leuven Brewers Guild as a Brew
Master in 1708, and only nine years later purchased the Den Hoorn
brewery. In memoriam, you can nd his last name on the brewery and
every bottle of Stella Artois around the world.2
While the brand asserts its Belgian identity, this is potentially problematic, as
we shall see below, in terms of exploiting the French linguistic fetish. Belgium,
of course, has three ofcial language communities Flemish/Dutch-speaking,
Wallon/French-speaking, and German-speaking and four language territories:
Flanders Flemish/Dutch, Wallonia French/Wallon, the bilingual zone in
the capital Brussels, and the small German-speaking territory along the border
with Germany. The countrys language policy is based on the territoriality prin-
2. See www.stellaartois.com.

ciple, whereby linguistic rights are afforded depending on location so, Flemish
in Flanders, and French in Wallonia, as opposed to on the principle of indi-
viduality. Thus, Stella Artois, being located in Flanders, should be a Flemish-
speaking beer, and the advertising should exploit a Flemish languageFlanders
territory link. However, in its advertising to UK consumers, it exploits a French
linguistic fetish. A further complication here is that while Leuven Louvain in
French, the home of the brand, is now located in the designated Flemish-
speaking area, like Brussels, it lies on the border between Flanders and Wallonia
and was for a time part of the bilingual province of Brabant. The splitting of the
citys ancient university, a signicant moment in the sociolinguistic history of
the region, into the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Universit cath-
olique de Louvain in 1968 was along linguistic lines. The former was a wholly
Dutch/Flemish-medium institution and remained in the city of Leuven, whereas
the latter was established as a French-medium institution in a new location
outside the town, denitively in French-speaking Wallonia. Thus, the language-
territory link that might be available to exploit in the brands identity is not a
straightforward one.
The marketing campaign for Cest Cidre was designed by the United
Kingdombased advertising agency Mother to coincide with the launch of a
new product by Stella Artois, a cider, targeted directly at the UK market. The
message of the campaign centered on linguistically differentiating the French
word cidre from the English word cider. The French word highlights the dis-
tinctive characteristics of the brand over its British competitors. To support
this linguistic differentiation, another key feature of the campaign was a verbal
hygiene Cameron 2005 tactic, whereby consumers were given instruction on
how to pronounce the French term cidre correctly in order to differentiate it
from the English word cider. They are told to place the emphasis on the second
syllable of the word and to pronounce it as -dra, thus domesticating the pro-
nunciation Venuti 1998. We can understand this type of instruction as part of
the contemporary paradigm of the working consumer, who adds value to the brand
by learning how to pronounce it correctly.
These messages of linguistic differentiation were supported and enhanced
by other marketing activities which exploited the same semiotic resources. For
example, in a social media marketing campaign, Le Prsident of Stella Artois
invited young Londoners to an evening playing the French game of boules not
the English bowls evening, where they could sample cidre not cider as a means
of constructing the brands identity:

Stella Boules is back again, you know the score, boules not bowls and
cidre not cidernever, never cider. Taking place between 12 noon and
9 p.m. this Saturday, get down for some serious Boules action and enjoy
a free chalice of Stella Artois Cidre, not cidernever, never cider.3
The campaign also featured television ads. One shows Le Prsident, marching
hurriedly to the television studio with his attentive entourage to make une
annonce importante an urgent statement, in relation to the difference between
cider and cidre, apparently in response to rumors that Stella Artois was launch-
ing a new cider rather than a new cidre. Le Prsident and all the participants are
dressed in 1960s costumes, and the studio is a retro set. Le Prsident uses stylized
and hyperbolic French-accented English throughout the ad, with only a small
number of French words, together with a uent, poetic style see Kelly-Holmes
2016 for a full account and discussion of this ad. In the second ad of the
campaign, Le Prsident is seen on his lavish country estate, driving in an open-
top sports car to visit his orchards, where beautiful female assistants pick the
ripest apples for him to inspect. In the evening, he is shown meeting locals for
a drink of cidre in a barn, although the scene inside is closer to a sophisticated
nightclub in a European city. He insists throughout, in a humorous way, that
this is the simple Belgian life on which cidre is based.
As Cook 2001, 74 points out, advertising carries a heavy proportion of
its meaning paralinguistically. The small number of French words used in the
campaign billboards and posters and in the television advertising would be eas-
ily understandable to the viewer in the United Kingdom either from secondary
schooling in Frenchthe predominant rst foreign language taught in that coun-
try at second levelor, as mentioned above, from the use and enregisterment
Agha 2003 of French through mediatized performances, involving a mixture
of a hyperbolized French-accented English with token French words, which is
well established and enregistered as a stable variety for media audiences in the
United Kingdom and other countries see Kelly-Holmes 2000, 2005; Hornikx
2007; Garca Vascano 2011. The French speaking is as much about emphasiz-
ing the non-Britishness of the brand as marking its Frenchness. Stellas ad-
vertising has itself contributed to the enregisterment of the French linguistic
fetishfor example, in a campaign based on the 1986 French lm Jean de Florette,
which uses genres such as silent comedy and surrealism, and the advertisement
Last Orders, directed by Jonathan Glazer, which is shot entirely in French.
3. See http://londontheinside.com/tag/bowls/.

Territoriality and EthnocentrismDebating Cest Cidre

Television advertisements such as the advertising of the Cest Cidre campaign
represent monologic, one-to-many communication. While audiences have
always engaged in Did you see . . . ? conversations see Richardson and
Meinhof 1999 for a discussion, which are part of the discursive culture of
any sociolinguistic context, and although there has been the possibility to en-
gage in feedback with the relevant television station or brand/company either
by contacting them about the advertisement or complaining to a third party
such as an advertising watchdog, the advertiser and broadcaster have tradition-
ally retained control of the advertising text and also feedback around it. In the
current era, however, new media enable remediation Bolter and Grusin 2000 of
monologic, one-to-many texts via social media and video-sharing sites such as
YouTube, which is specically designed for this type of remediation and, in fact,
relies on it. On the one hand, this represents a loss of control on the part of the
brand/company, since the advertisement is simply out there in hyperspace and
can be posted anywhere, forwarded to anyone, modied in various ways, com-
mented on, critiqued, parodied, ridiculed, and so on.
On the other hand, marketers recognise the impossibility of holding on to
or controlling the meaning of ads and products in the current era and rely on, or
at least expect some input from, consumers. In fact, contemporary marketing is
premised on the co-creation of value between the producer and the active, rather
than passive, consumer. Consumers are seen to co-create value in a whole range
of ways value being understood here as not only the functional and economic
value of goods and services, but also the consumers interpretation of consump-
tion objects, including products, brands, and services Pongsakornrungsilp and
Schroder 2011, 305, for example, by using products for identity work, forming
networks around products, giving feedback on products and suggestions for new
products Sicilia and Palazn 2008; Brodie et al. 2013. Some of this co-creation
involves sharing ads, discussing ads, modifying them, and so on. Advertisers can
also interfere with, attempt to steer, and directly engage in these processes, aim-
ing for a relationship with consumers via social mediasometimes setting up brand
communities for just this purpose Pongsakornrungsilp and Schroeder 2011.
New spaces are opened up for debate and discussion, and the producer loses
some of its control to the consumer.
The current campaign is a good example of this, in that Stella Artois has its
own YouTube channel, where it posts its advertising and PR videos and allows
some comment on these. But individuals can also post the ad to their own
channels, and it is to one of these that we turn now.

The campaign ad featuring the president making une annonce importante

received 46,479 views before it was removed in May 2014. The video had
received 85 comments, 124 likes, and 13 dislikes. There were 64 contributors,
and almost all 56 contributed only once. Using Herrings 2004 criteria for
evaluating online communities, the levels of interaction are low, and we can see
this as a eeting type of community. We can also see how one individual can
have a signicant inuence in new media, attracting a large number of likes and
inuencing the debate. Table 1 shows the most popular comments in terms of
likes by other contributors and also gives details of who contributed the com-
ment and what their location was according to their prole:
Table 2 gives a broad thematic analysis of the discourses present in the
comments, keeping in mind that discourses are interlinked and that most posts
contain a variety of discourses.
The predominant discourse in the comments is concerned with contest-
ing Stella Artoiss use of French to highlight its origin. In addition, consumer
ethnocentric/national-chauvinist discourses, and counterauthentic claims are
all generated in response to the use of French to authenticate a Belgian product and
differentiate it from the equivalent English product. Another interesting discourse
is one of correction and policing Blommaert et al. 2009, whereby the cultural
and linguistic knowledge of previous posters is questioned and corrected by their
peers. Some posters also engage in a purely technical discussion of the aesthetic
merits or otherwise of the advertisement.
A very large number of contributors take their cue from the campaign and
engage in linguistic display and play with French:
zis adveeertt gitttss oonn myyy teeeettzooo hh oooo hh ooooohhhh

ahh ahhh ahhh ahhhi ve found theee remmmotegoooooodbyyyhhee
!!!!stuuuuppeeeeedd!!!!!
So would that make him a wankre, tossre maybe?
Table 1. Most Popular Comments in Terms of Likes

Contributor location given Comment Likes
andybolin UK What a wankre 67

BeerGogglesReviews UK I bet he has never had a Dickens Cider. Go on say that aloud. 38
Broadercasting UK Ladvertissment Cest Cool, nest pas? 3
Christopher Smith UK calm down dear its only a commercial 2
Frankiezollo58 its not bloody cidre its cider. stella artois is not bloody french 2
its emish. stella artois stop with your identity crisis
Somebodyjustgotshot UK im French and this advert makes me lol 2

Table 2. Main Discourses Featuring in Discussion of Cest Cidre on YouTube and

Main Discursive Strategies Used
Discourse Example/explanation
Contesting authenticity In relation to Stella Artoiss use of the French language

Reinforcing territoriality Flanders is Dutch/Flemish-speaking; French in Wallonia
is not the same as French in France
Policing Correction of linguistic and cultural knowledge
National chauvinism Anti-French / Belgian/ European /foreign;
Superiority of English produce
Technical Quality and merits of the advertisement and approach
In a co-construction model of marketing, this extended use of the semiotic

resource of the French linguistic fetish by posters can add value to the brand,
create future conditions for usage, and contribute to further enregisterment.
Table 3 shows those posters who contributed more than one comment to
the discussion. As we can see the top two contributors are from Belgium, with
all others from the United Kingdom. The campaign was, as mentioned above,
designed by a UK agency for a UK audience, but in the borderless media space
of YouTube, the ad can of course be viewed by individuals from outside of this
target audience.
As stated above, the main theme of the YouTube discussion about the ad
is the disputing of the use of the French language by Stella Artois in promoting
its product. This discourse comprises several aspects. First, the essentialized
language-territory link exploited by Stella Artois between French-speaking and
Belgian identity is disputed because of the brands origin in the Flemish-speaking
territory, as in the following example:
Extract 1. Stella is from Flanders where people speak Dutch not French.
Ceci nest pas un representation correcte.
Table 3. Posters Who Contribute More than Once by Number of Posts, Location,
and Discourses
Name Posts Location given Discourse
Anisuthideyakoindu 2 Belgium localized Disputing authenticity;

reinforcing territoriality
Benjamin Smolders 2 Belgium Disputing authenticity;
reinforcing territoriality
Trancehi 2 United Kingdom National chauvinism
TheHscbaj 2 United Kingdom Policing
Dlewsey 2 United Kingdom National chauvinism
Somebodyjustgotshot 2 United Kingdom Technical

Extract 2. In Flemish it is CIDER!!!

Who are these idiots? Stella Artois is Flemish
It is from Leuven NOT Louvain
As the comments above show, Stella Artois is criticized for using French mainly
because the brand has its origins in Leuven, in the Flemish-speaking region. These
posts also demand a restoration of the territoriality principle Stella Artois is Flem-
ish and so should speak Flemish and that the brand respect this principle.
While the disputing of the national identity constructed is generally carried
out by the Belgian contributors to the forum, one of the UK contributors accuses
Stella Artois of having an identity crisis in the post below:
Extract 3. its not bloody cidre, its cider. stella artois is not bloody
french its emish. stella artois stop with your identity crisis
The discourse also reveals the extent to which the French language fetish
is enregistered for UK audiences. As the contributor in extract 5 points out,
Flemish/Dutch is not enregistered for this audience, which is why, presum-
ably, it is not part of Stella Artoiss campaign in the United Kingdom, while in
extract 6 the contributor acknowledges the success of a marketing campaign that
can market a beverage based on an alternative pronunciation:
Extract 4. the only reason why Stella Artois does NOT put cider on their
bottles is because it is cider in Flemish and it would never sell.
Extract 5. I dont know whats worsethe fact that they can market a
beverage based on an alternative pronunciation, or the fact
that its working. I really want a cidre now.
The notion that the French linguistic fetish can also work for a generic continen-
tal origin in the way that say Dutch or Flemish cannot is highlighted by a num-
ber of contributors:
Extract 6. To all those who say cidre is a French drink your wrong, its
european, meaning anything made in europe is technically
cidre, stella just used it as a market niche to get people to
wonder whats so special to call it cidre not cider and try it.
The other main discourse running through the comments is one that can best
be described as ethnocentric or national chauvinist. This discourse involves mak-

ing counterclaims about the superiority of the English cider product in com-
parison to cidre. For example,
Extract 7. Funny ad, but Ill stick to British Cider , not cidre
Extract 8. I liked this but not as much as my very English Aspall Cider.
Sorry France you lose this one! Hah!!!!
However, along with counter-claims about the superiority of English / British

cider, some comments are also overtly racist:
Extract 9. french being ass holes as usual . . . jk jk. . . sort of
Interestingly, despite Stellas emphasis on a Belgian identity, animosity in

the discourse about the campaign here is toward France, not Belgium. In fact,
a number of contributors even correct anti-French posts and rush to reinforce
borders between the French-speaking region of Belgium and France, as in the
following comment which was posted by a contributor using a French tricolor as
their icon:
Extract 10. Dont put FRENCH from FRANCE and FRENCH from
BELGIUM in the same net OK ? I hate this ! people dont
realise the difference between them RRRhhh!
Discussion
As we can see from the example of Cest Cidre, basing a brand identity and
marketing campaign on an essentialized language-territory link in order to
exploit a country-of-origin appeal carries both opportunities and risks for a
product, particularly when we look at the role of consumers in co-constructing
value for the product and meaning for the ad and the brand. Co-construction,
as outlined above, involves consumers and producers working together, often
asymmetrically, to create value for the product, rather than the former passively
consuming products that have already been infused with value by the latter. Co-
creation of value is not always a straightforward process. The ads remediation
to YouTube and its discussion there offer us one such glimpse and allow us to
observe how this particular space enables language ideologies to emerge in peer-
to-peer interactions with other contributors as well as with the brand.
Interestingly, territoriality is in general respected by marketers, where con-
sumers are sufciently attractive in economic terms Kelly-Holmes 2013. In line

with this principle, on Stella Artoiss localized Belgian site, strict territoriality is
enforced with parallel monolingual options offered in French and Dutch/Flemish.
Consumers choose their language/territory when entering the site and are then
guided to a monolingual version in their chosen language, their choice being saved
for their next visit. Thus, Stella Artois, in common with many contemporary brands
is able to use both exible in the way in which it exploits French in its adver-
tising and xed concepts respecting Belgian territoriality principles when com-
municating with consumers of language and multilingualism in its marketing
approach see Kelly-Holmes 2013 for a discussion of these issues and Kelly-
Holmes 2010 for a discussion of both of these issues in relation to McDonalds
global campaign.
As Heller 2008, 512 points out, while the use of language as a means of
creating distinction in this case for a product may blur the relationship be-
tween political symbols and exchange goods, contributors to the discussion
are keen to reestablish a clear distinction and a need for the relationship between
exchange goods and political symbols to be in alignment. One possibly unforeseen
risk from the brands point of view is in the production and reproduction
of national chauvinist and racist discourses that occur in response to the ad and
that, because of the nature of the site and the nature of social media, become part
of the text of the ad through its remediation. However, given that the campaign was
designed by a UK agency for a UK audience, it can also be argued that the ethno-
centric discourse of some of the contributors to the site actually enhances rather
than takes away from the country-of-origin branding used by Stella Artois, by
heightening its foreignness.
It would appear that the extent of the French linguistic fetish means that its
indexicalization is relatively stable both for the UK audience and to a certain
extent globally and that it has been inscribed Bauman and Briggs 1990 in the
sociolinguistic culture through the use of French accents voiced/styled and
authentic, and in particular mediatized fake French and French linguistic fetish
Kelly-Holmes 2000, 2005. Thus, it is a key semiotic resource available to brands
in order to construct a French-speaking identity in the UK market. In the con-
temporary globalized economy, language is deemed to play a crucial role, not
only as a mode of management but also as a source of distinction Heller and
Duchne 2012, and one of its main roles is to create authenticity for brands,
companies, personalities, regions, and so on, by marking place indexicalities, as
discussed above. However, this use of language can only be successful as long
as it indexes something recognisable as a place or social category Heller and
Duchne 2012, 11, and this is what the contributors on YouTube are claiming that

Stella Artois does not have the ability to do with the French language. It was
argued above that three components need to be in place for country-of-origin
appeals using linguistic fetish to be successful. The country-of-origin link to the
brand is established, as is the link between the brand and the French language,
but the link between all three of these is disputed by consumers, as we saw in the
posts discussed above and in the discourses that emerge.
Conclusion
Coming back to the focus of this special issue, the case of Cest Cidre asks
questions about nation branding from another perspective. The current study
is not one of how a particular nation is branded for its own citizens or for
external audiences, but instead how a product is given a national identity in
marketing discourse and the semiotic resourcesprimarily linguisticthat
are used for that purpose. Thus, we are dealing here with the construction of
the other and ways of seeing the other that are ethnocentrically determined and
that of course are ultimately about constructing the self. So while this looks like
a text that is about Frenchness and foreignness, it is of course very much more
a text about Britishness and national identity. Marketing discourses are one
less obvious place where we can see how the nation constructs itself by the
way in which the other is constructed and domesticated for it. While we have
many studies of these practices, in terms of the use of country of origin, terroir,
and linguistic fetish in advertising, as outlined above, the addition of data from
YouTube discussions of advertising adds another piece to the picture. It also
provides another foruma new public in Gal and Woolards 2001 termsin
which issues of nation, language, and territory can be debated and where we
have access to the effects of these widely circulating discourses. As Heller points
out in relation to the commodication of languages in the current era: the new
economys valuing of increasingly commodied cultural artefacts and symbolic
resources blurs the relationship between political symbols and exchange goods
Heller 2008, 512. Thus, while the branding plays with and blurs these re-
lationships, the contributors to the YouTube discussion clearly show that it is
still very real. The Cest Cidre campaign and its discussion on YouTube thus
highlight how, under new economic conditions of globalisation, existing lan-
guage forms and congurations e.g., bilingualism are put to new uses, gain
new values, and become objects of intense scrutiny as well as vehicles and sites
of ideological struggle, contestation, legitimation, and authentication of ethnic,
national, and other subject positions Jaworski and Thurlow 2010, 258.

The play with French and the ways of hearing and seeing French also give
us an insight into the extent to which these varieties, which are largely created
and disseminated by media, are publically enregistered. What we also see in the
case of Cest Cidre is how stable the semiotic resources of nation branding are
and, more crucially, who is and is not allowed to use them and for which pur-
poses. This is particularly apparent in the way in which transgressing these un-
written rules is sanctioned by the audience, who generally opt for a restoration
of predictability and stability in relation to borders and branding.
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Constructing and Disputing Brand National Identity in Marketing Discourse

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Constructing and Disputing

Brand National Identity

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Country-of-Origin Appeals in Marketing

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Linguistic Fetish and Country-of-Origin Advertising

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visuality is inducted into the service of creating a homogenous cultural per-

Constructing Stella Artoiss National Identitythe Campaign

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Territoriality and EthnocentrismDebating Cest Cidre

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The campaign ad featuring the president making une annonce importante

zis adveeertt gitttss oonn myyy teeeettzooo hh oooo hh ooooohhhh

So would that make him a wankre, tossre maybe?

Table 1. Most Popular Comments in Terms of Likes

andybolin UK What a wankre 67

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Table 2. Main Discourses Featuring in Discussion of Cest Cidre on YouTube and

Contesting authenticity In relation to Stella Artoiss use of the French language

In a co-construction model of marketing, this extended use of the semiotic

Anisuthideyakoindu 2 Belgium localized Disputing authenticity;

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Extract 2. In Flemish it is CIDER!!!

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However, along with counter-claims about the superiority of English / British

Extract 9. french being ass holes as usual . . . jk jk. . . sort of

Interestingly, despite Stellas emphasis on a Belgian identity, animosity in

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. 2014. Linguistic Fetish: The Sociolinguistics of Visual Multilingualism. In Visual

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