Dr. Laura Oswald
President and Founder, Marketing Semiotics Inc., Chicago, IL
Dr. Laura Oswald is founder and president of Marketing Semiotics, a brand strategy and research boutique located in Chicago, IL, USA. Drawing upon deep expertise in marketing semiotics* and brand management, the company has led successful planning, new product development, creative design, and corporate reorganization for blue-chip brands worldwide since 2000. Clients include Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Company, American Express, Nestlé, Lever USA and China, Burger King, Pfizer, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and mid-sized companies such as NewGround Inc.
Author of two groundbreaking books on brand strategy and value creation, as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles, white papers, and blog posts, Oswald divides her time between consulting to industry-academic positions at Northwestern University, the ESSEC Business School in Paris, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Her books, Marketing Semiotics: Signs, Strategies, and Brand Value (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Creating Value: The Theory and Practice of Marketing Semiotics Research (Oxford University Press 2015) established strategic semiotics as a mainstream methodology for aligning brand strategy to emerging developments in consumer culture, category trends, and financial markets.
Laura holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communications from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in semiotics and French studies from New York University, in conjunction with the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Sciences Sociales in Paris, France.
“Marketing Semiotics is a hybrid of marketing science and anthropology.”
