Over the past twenty years or so, our awareness of branded logic has become pervasive in all aspects of our lives. Almost everyone can name global multinational corporations and describe an associated set of values for speciic companies merely by seeing their logos. While this may seem benign enough, when contrasted with the fact that relatively few people can name the types of trees that exist around them based on the physical characteristics of the bark and leaves, it demonstrates how a fundamental understanding of brand – and the ubiquity of brand imagery – has fundamentally displaced humankind’s connection with nature itself. For example, five hundred years ago, if one didn’t have a strong understanding of the plants & trees that surrounded them, they would be in danger.

People – once thought of as mere “celebrities” – have joined things, objects, and products in the realm of brand logic and preservation. Indeed, individuals with a global proile now have “brand management” teams that rival medium size corporations, complete with all of the trappings of brand infrastructure including mission statements, guidelines documents & social media strategies.

More recently, cities have begun to behave more like brands, as global competition for a tax base & talented workforce has caused municipalities to invest in their image and reputation. Certainly places like New York City, Melbourne, London and Singapore now not only behave like brands, they have unified visual expressions that resemble large global financial institutions or multinational corporations.

Increasingly, regions, Nations, groups of countries unified by trade or culture, or even geographies are emerging as brands in their own right. It’s not hard, for example, for us to imagine what a brand for “The Sahara” might look like and how it could be pitched to a global tourism market.

Arising alongside contemporary discourses on architecture and design is a relatively new phenomenon of “Place Branding.” This emergent discipline is beginning to operate on an increasingly large scale and has become the dominant organizing logic for how countries, landscapes, regions and municipalities communicate to the world.

On the scale of countries and regions, branding has displaced ideology as the unifying narrative for a shared set of national principles. In cities, branding has become at least as viable as the discipline formerly known as “urban planning” and is indeed faster, cheaper, and without the baggage of the excesses of 20th Century modernist practices. At the same time, many ambitious municipalities have found branding to be a useful tool in changing the conversation regarding districts facing challenges related to public perception, economic viability, and civic value.

While branding historically has been thought of as a marketing device, or more crassly, simply “to sell,” can we now begin to think of BRAND x (Place) as a mechanism to help create exchange and value. What if branding, usually aligned strictly with corporate interests, could now be used to identify, promote, and visualize a larger public good?