Brands and the Language of Symbols

Branding is nothing more than symbolism.  A logo, a name, a set of letters; these inert forms can be imbued with a life and meaning, made to represent far more than the product that they are printed on.  Mercedes and Chevy both make cars, mechanically they are extremely similar, and they serve the same basic purpose, but those brands have very different connotations.  Chevy invokes muddy construction sites, men in hard hats and denim throwing bricks into pick-up trucks.  Mercedes conjures images of business suits and sunglasses that appear from behind darkly tinted windows.  This isn’t an accident; it is the result of years’ worth of deliberate branding to appear as either blue-collar or refined, familiar or exotic. 

The associations that we have with brands are important to us, as they allow us to communicate in subtle ways about products and companies.  When someone talks about Apple or uses them as a reference point, your brain automatically assumes pleasant aesthetics and an intuitive interface.  There is a language implicit in branding that most people can understand, and for many brands the icon, whether it is an image or a name, is the cumulative reputation of the company expressed visually.

The reason that I am talking about all of this is that this symbolic language is something that we take for granted, and can change the way we view things.  I was reading something a week ago and it referenced a study that was done recently (I don’t recall what the study was), and the citation for the information said “WSJ” along with a date.  I remember being a little surprised at the claim being made, which was why I checked the source in the first place.  However, seeing what I thought was an attribution to the Wall Street Journal, I decided there might be some merit to the statement.  For better or worse, the Wall Street Journal is a trusted source, and they have earned that brand credit by maintaining consistently high journalistic standards, whether you agree with their politics or not.  So, I went to their website and spent twenty minutes searching in vain for this mysterious article.

To make a long story short, it turns out that the citation was in fact referencing the Winston-Salem Journal, not the Wall Street Journal.  Now, I have no opinion on that publication, and I am sure that it is a fine one.  However, to most people in the world, “WSJ’ is shorthand for the Wall Street Journal.  If I saw a sign advertising the NYT for $0.25, only to go into the store and discover that they meant “native young tomatoes,” I would feel that I had been misled (though I would buy the tomatoes).

Obviously, there are plenty of interpretations for a lot of abbreviations and initials, but there is usually one dominant interpretation based on context.  If you are talking about a business-related study and cite WSJ as the source, 99% of people are going to assume that you mean the Wall Street Journal, and I have a hard time believing that someone making such a reference wouldn’t know that.