In addressing the phenomenon of branding, we will discuss it as a primarily communicative process that involves the efforts of corporations to shape human identity and influence the cultural and social landscape. Our lives are saturated with corporate, manufactured meanings that, in many respects, lie largely out of our control. Branding is about creating complex systems of meaning that shape social realities and people’s identities.

How might we define a brand? It is “the total constellation of meanings, feelings, perceptions, beliefs and goodwill attributed to any market offering displaying a particular sign." A brand, then, is less about the product per se, and more about the constellation of meanings that a product embodies and the feelings and perceptions that such meanings invoke in the consumer. In this sense, branding is a fundamentally communicative process. Companies develop a brand formula that highlighted what the advertising industry referred to as the unique selling proposition (USP) of a product—a uniqueness often rooted in highly questionable claims.

The process of branding thus involves the construction of a set of meanings around a particular product, person, company, town, city, or even a country (in other words, anything can be branded, including air, dirt, and water. Many companies therefore rely on the strength of their corporate brands to engage in brand extension; that is, leveraging the meanings and emotions associated with the company to encompass a variety of different products—products that frequently bear little relationship to one another. The brand–consumer relationship is not static and has undergone several transformations over the decades.

One might argue that companies’ understanding of branding as a fundamentally communicative processes has grown increasingly sophisticated during this time. In the next section, we will examine this evolution.