Exploring Static and Dynamic Modes of Self-branding and Community Involvement in the illycaffé English Website and CSR Commercials

Critical Multimodal Discourse Analysis (CMDA), with its emphasis on ‘critical’ skills in grasping the ideological meanings made in and through multimodal texts, can offer precious insights into organizational culture (Höllerer et al. 2019) and, more specifically, into corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Höllerer et al. 2013) – an area covering a wide range of topics, including environmental protection, safety and ethics, as well as local communities’ involvement. The locus of analysis is a specific section of illycaffé’s website illustrating the brand’s slogan («live happilly») and philosophy («welcome on the road to happiness»), as instantiated in its 2016-2022 CSR advertising campaigns. Through the multimodal orchestration (Kress 2010; Bezemer and Kress 2016) of static and dynamic elements, as well as the reiteration of iconic circularity as the dominant narrative principle, the multimodal texts under examination will be shown to strategically construct and construe illy’s relationship with stakeholder communities and its commitment to consumer engagement. While reflecting on CMDA’s methodological gains, the paper focuses on the special dynamics that entail the ‘blowing-up’ of specific elements and the ‘narcotization’ of some others (Eco 1984 [1979]), as well as on illy’s recourse to transgressive semiotics (Scollon and Scollon 2003) as a distinctive self-branding strategy.