GOOCHI

Brands aren’t real. Not in the way chairs, trees, or taxes are real. You can’t trip over a brand or hold one in your hand. And yet people build identities around them, defend them online, and feel genuine emotional attachment to a collection of colors, shapes, and letters arranged in a particular order. That alone should give us pause. A brand isn’t a physical thing. It’s not the shoe, the phone, the hoodie, or the drink. It’s the story attached to those things. The meaning layered on top. The emotional shorthand that turns an object into a signal. When people argue about brands, they’re rarely arguing about quality alone. They’re arguing about identity, taste, values, and belonging, using products as proxies. That’s not accidental; it’s how the system was designed.

Branding works because the human brain is extremely good at attaching meaning to symbols. We do it instinctively. Flags, uniforms, religious icons, album covers, emojis, all of them trigger associations that go far beyond their physical form. Brands are simply the corporate version of this ancient habit. They take ordinary objects and give them emotional weight. Neuroscience backs that up. Studies in consumer psychology have shown that strong brands activate areas of the brain associated with memory, emotion, and identity rather than sensory processing. One well-known study conducted at Baylor College of Medicine found that when people drank Coca-Cola and Pepsi without knowing which was which, many preferred Pepsi. But when the Coke label was revealed, preference shifted dramatically, even though the liquid remained the same. The brain responded not to taste, but to story. That’s the quiet power of branding. Your brain isn’t evaluating sugar water. It’s recalling childhood summers, commercials, shared experiences, and cultural mythology. The logo does more work than the product ever could.

When you strip a brand down to its components, what’s left is surprisingly simple. A typeface chosen to feel modern, friendly, or authoritative. A color palette engineered to trigger trust, energy, calm, or urgency. A tone of voice that suggests confidence without arrogance. And a promise, sometimes explicit, often implied, that buying this thing will move you closer to the person you want to be. That promise is rarely logical. It’s emotional. Athletic brands don’t sell clothing; they sell discipline, strength, and aspiration. Tech brands don’t sell devices; they sell elegance, intelligence, and creative identity. Wellness brands don’t sell leggings or supplements; they sell control, self-care, and the idea that you’re doing something right with your life. The product is the receipt. The real transaction is psychological. That’s why people will pay more for objects that are functionally identical to cheaper alternatives. It’s not because they’re irrational. It’s because they’re responding to meaning. Humans have always done it; we just used to do it with symbols carved into stone instead of logos printed on packaging.

Branding experts are surprisingly honest about it. Marty Neumeier, one of the most cited voices in the field, defines a brand as “a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.” Not the company’s intention. Not the mission statement. The feeling. In other words, a brand exists entirely in the mind of the audience. It’s not owned by the company. It’s co-created by everyone who interacts with it. Which means brands are, at their core, shared beliefs. That explains why branding is so resilient. Once enough people agree that something “means” something, it becomes self-reinforcing. A shoe becomes a status symbol. A coffee cup becomes a personality marker. A logo becomes shorthand for values you may or may not actually practice. The belief sustains itself through repetition. It also explains why brands often feel personal. When someone criticizes a brand you love, it can feel oddly like a personal attack. That reaction isn’t about the product. It’s about what the brand represents to you, your taste, your identity, your sense of belonging. The logo becomes a stand-in for you. Even the way brands spell their names plays into this psychology. Intentional misspellings signal rebellion, simplicity, or modernity. Dropping vowels feels efficient. Adding unnecessary letters feels playful or premium. None of it improves the product. All of it improves memorability. The name isn’t chosen for clarity; it’s chosen for emotional texture.

At this point, it’s fair to ask whether this is manipulative. And the answer is: sometimes, yes. Branding can absolutely be used to obscure reality, inflate value, or distract from substance. A weak product with strong branding can outperform a better product with none. That’s not because consumers are foolish; it’s because attention and trust are finite resources, and brands are very good at capturing both. But it would be too simple to frame branding as a trick played on passive consumers. People aren’t just victims of branding. They participate in it. They adopt it, remix it, wear it, parody it, and argue about it. Brands only exist because people agree to carry them forward. In that sense, brands function a lot like other shared abstractions: money, nations, fashion trends, sports teams. None of these things exist in nature. All of them shape behavior profoundly. They’re real because we treat them as real. The danger comes when brands move from being tools of expression to sources of identity. When “what you buy” becomes “who you are,” choice starts narrowing. People stop evaluating products on their merits and start defending them as extensions of themselves. Loyalty replaces curiosity. Critique feels threatening.

This is why stepping back matters. Recognizing that brands are constructed doesn’t mean you have to stop enjoying them. It means you get to enjoy them without confusion. You can appreciate design without mistaking it for virtue. You can like a product without letting it define you. You can wear the hoodie without becoming the mission statement. Brands aren’t evil. They’re not villains. They’re stories, some well told, some lazy, some genuinely useful. They help us navigate complexity by offering shortcuts. But shortcuts should never replace thinking. When you remove the branding, what’s left is often surprisingly ordinary. A phone. A drink. A piece of fabric sewn into a familiar shape. Sometimes it’s excellent. Sometimes it’s mediocre. The logo doesn’t change that. It just changes how you feel about it. And feelings are powerful. They matter. They just shouldn’t be confused with reality.

So yes, brands aren’t real in any physical sense. But they’re real in the way all shared beliefs are real: they shape behavior because we allow them to. The key isn’t rejecting them outright. It’s remembering what they are. You’re not loyal to a company. You’re responding to a story that resonated with you at a particular moment. That story can be meaningful, fun, nostalgic, or motivating. Just don’t mistake it for truth. That logo is still a squiggly arrangement of lines. A brand is still an idea. And you are still allowed to enjoy ideas, without letting them decide who you are.