The intimate relationship between food and place branding: a cultural semiotic approach

Over the past ten years, food and places have been at the epicenter of sophisticated branding strategies. On the one hand, there has been enormous growth in the number and complexity of branding devices such as ‘geographical indications’ (GIs) that aim to establish cultural associations between local food products and places of origin. On the other hand, cities, regions, and states use cuisine, ingredients, and traditional dishes in destination marketing strategies to introduce food identity as a distinctive element in the brand image of a place. These processes have been extensively studied by place branding researchers, inasmuch as by social and human scientists at large, while highlighting how the image of food and places can be mutually enhanced in brand strategies. This chapter investigates the relationships between food, geography, and branding from a cultural semiotic perspective. It looks at the regulations of two successful GIs: the famous movie Babette's Feast, featuring an award-winning Scandinavian restaurant; and an iconic dish of Sicilian cuisine that represents a major tourism marker. Our goal is to show how seemingly distant cultural objects can be involved in processes of translation and value transfer of identities. In this respect, semiotic analysis can contribute in capturing the incessant dialogue between brands and culture in identity construction processes. It is intended to emphasize how successful geographic and food brands act in the semiosphere by enabling the mutual dialogue between place and food identities. In this sense, semiotic analysis allows us to understand how brands not only reflect already given identity elements, but also stimulate their invention and evolution.