ABSTRACT
Plethoras of brands have built their popularity on the use of an animal in their logo, among others the Playboy bunny and Harley-Davidson eagle. In several industries, the overuse and ‘exploitation’ of an animal in logos has lead not-for-profit organizations to encourage brands’ contribution to the protection of their animal emblem (Cervellon 2013). Lacoste, for example, contribute to the protection of the crocodile through the saveyourlogo campaign. Indeed, the luxury and fashion industries are among those industries which rely most on an animal. The animal emblem is a strong positive signal for consumers and benefits the creation of a unique brand identity. It embodies the brand’s physical appearance and communicates personality. In turn, consumers use these logos to associate with certain groups, the luxury clientele, the fashion-forward, etc. Several studies tend to demonstrate that in the luxury and fashion industry, the logo is a determinant criterion in the purchase of luxury brands (Han et al. 2010). Those parvenus or wannabes favour loud logos to assimilate with the group of patrons, connoisseurs of luxury (Han et al. 2010). Indeed, luxury and fashion brands are purchased ‘neither for a certain use-value, nor for their symbolic role in some interpersonal relationship but for their additional meaning in consumer society… [they] have a sign-value on top of (or in substitution of) their functional and economical meaning’ (Mortelmans 2005: 510). Consequently, the study of visual symbols provides a useful interpretative framework to understand consumers’ meaning on luxury and fashion. In this chapter we investigate the meaning encoded by brands when they use an animal, and the meaning transferred from the brand to the consumer, via the animal logo.
