Marketers and branding experts take good care to think about various elements of their brands: What feelings do the colors evoke? What are people’s reactions to the logo? What are the brand values? So what is the role of geographical entanglement in branding?

Another important aspect of branding is the “where” according to an infographic produced by B2B product comparison site Market Inspector.

The term used in the infographic is “geographic entanglement,” and we’re all familiar with this concept, even if we don’t think about it frequently. For example, Volkswagen deliberately uses German in its international slogans to maintain the “country of origin” effect, which can strongly influence buying decisions, the infographic says.

It goes on to explain that geographic entanglement matters to brands for various reasons, such as the idea that “positive geographic associations can be a long-term competitive advantage that is hard to imitate.”

We are living the branded world. That is a rather stark way of putting it, but brands really do seem to permeate certain aspects of our lives. In some cases, you could even call them parts of our very culture and identity. Experts have, of course, long realized this triple role of brands as economic, social, and cultural entities all at once, but in everyday life, it often goes unnoticed, overlooked, unchallenged. Especially when it comes to geographical entanglements connected to brands.

For more on the geography of branding (or the branding of geography), check out the infographic.

With this level of intimacy, it is no wonder that it is often hard for us to take a step back and see brands as complex constructs, made for a specific reason. Which is precisely what branding does. Using many different elements like cleverly built logos or certain colours, it tries to appeal to our subconscious or conscious processes of decision-making.

But building up brand equity also involves creating and promoting more abstract attachments such as emotions, attitudes, and lifestyles around a brand. Therefore, the most valuable assets of a brand are often the ones which are intangible, because they can be quite hard for competitors to imitate. Among these assets, which are often quite familiar to us, but mostly taken for granted, are geographical entanglements. Communicating a certain brand image via association to a specific geographical place, they can be highly influential, in both a positive and negative way!

So no matter if you are a consumer or an entrepreneur, brands are inevitably connected to your daily life – and geographical entanglements are inevitably ingrained in brands, whether they choose to advertise them or not. Why not take a step back, and let this infographic by Market Inspector take you through the different layers, beyond the widely popular “Country of Origin Effect”? There is often more to our familiar brands than meets the eye!