Locality and local identity discourses in post-handover Hong Kong brand advertisements

Abstract

Since the handover in 1997, identity politics have arisen in Hong Kong social and political movements. Locality and local identity discourses have become unprecedentedly salient to rearticulate Hong Kong culture and identity. People’s feelings, thoughts and behaviors in relation to community solidarity and identity construction in the name of “bentu” or locality are significantly advocated among Hongkongers in terms of the sense of belonging and emotional bonding. Similarly, brand advertising deploys emotional appeals to build brand trust and loyalty among target consumers. Brand advertisements have increasingly deployed much more complicated multimodal semiotics and metaphors to create identity myths to emotionally affect and persuade consumers by the sharing of collective representations of local cultures and identities. This study will investigate how Hong Kong advertisers deploy multimodal semiotics in their brand advertisements to establish brand equity in line with the recent cultural emotions and sentiments of Hongkongers.