branding

今日から仕事始めです。
さて、Yuval Noah Harariの "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" を読んでいます。
Lesson 17(Post-Truth)から引用します。

Branding often involves retelling the same fictional story again and again, until people become convinced it is the truth. What images come to mind when you think about Coca-Cola? Do you think about young healty people engaging in sports and having fun together? Or do you think about overweight diabetes patients lying in a hospital bed? Drinking lots of Coca-Cola will not make you athletic - rather, it increases your chances of suffering from obesity and diabetes. Yet for decades Coca-Cola has invested billions of dollars in linking itself to youth, health and sports - and billions of humans subconsciously believe in this linkage.
The truth is that truth was never high on the agenda of Homo sapiens.

"brand" は元々烙印から来て、良い意味にも悪い意味にも使われ、引用文にあるように、創り話も何度も繰り返されると真実の様に人は信じてしまうのですね。　私はいわゆるブランド商品なる物に全く興味はありませんが。
・Oxford English Dictionary: brand somebody/something (as) something to describe somebody/something as being something bad or unpleasant, especially unfairly:
They were branded as liars and cheats.
The newspapers branded her a hypocrite.
Her parents had long since branded her a failure.
・Collins Dictionary: The branding of a product is the presentation of it to the public in a way that makes it easy for people to recognize or identify.: Local companies build the theme parks, while we look after the branding.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: the act of making a product, organization, person, or place easy to recognize as different from others by connecting it with a particular name, design, symbol, set of qualities, etc.: The successful branding and marketing of the new beer has already boosted sales.

引用文の最後にある "The truth is that truth was never high on the agenda of Homo sapiens." は皮肉たっぷりですが、やはり本当の事なんでしょうね。