Kitsch, irony, and consumerism: A semiotic analysis of Diesel advertising 2000–2008

Abstract Diesel advertising poses a conundrum for semiotics practitioners. Diesel ads are thought-provoking and seem to interrogate prevailing social mores as well as impugning fashion and consumerism. Each season's Successful Living campaign is semiotically rich with a high connotative index. Teasing out these polysemic meanings is not a straightforward task, however. This article examines in detail six Diesel campaigns from 2000 to 2008. The article focuses on the rhetorical devices and representational tropes that form the grounds for a Diesel approach to advertising. These include both a kitsch aesthetic and a camp sensibility. The author argues that the same brand constructs twin codes — one that positions Diesel as a scurrilous and insightful countercultural observer with key objections to our consumerist culture, and the other a nihilistic and ludic mischief maker that invites smart decoders into a realm of irony and textual bliss. The analysis applies a toolkit approach to semiotics that amalgamates theoretical grounding with pragmatism. Keywords: advertising; double-coding; irony; kitsch; consumerism