In a broader sense, a brand is not just a representation of a business entity that includes goods and services or a tourist destination that is oriented towards economic aspects. Brands are also included in various aspects of community life, including culture, politics, and society. Some entities that are considered non-businesses, such as political parties, advocacy organizations, artist communities, and religious organizations, inherently have a normative concept of communication culture as an effort to manage image. Even further, ideologies such as capitalism, communism, neoliberalism, and others manage branding practices as a habitus in building reputation and loyalty.

The first president of Indonesia, Soekarno, is one example of a brand at a personal level that is recorded in the minds of Indonesian and global societies as a person with strong self-confidence, full of appeal, and rich in new ideas. Through a dramatic touch, the Apple brand made figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, and the Dalai Lama as sources of inspiration when carrying out the “Think Different” advertising campaign launched in 1997. The advertising campaign successfully garnered global popularity in line with efforts to revitalize the spirit of the Apple brand to reach its true nature. 

Brands can build strong human relationships and are a deep manifestation of the human condition as social beings. Individuals need to be close to others and form groups when society develops. It is human nature to identify with family, tribe, city, country, sports team, political party, favorite band, and religion. Branding is closely related to a sense of ownership and grouping; tribe is a brand, city is a brand, and political party is a brand. This explains that branding in business and non-business activities generally has the same main goal: to create relationships of trust, loyalty, and recommendations from their audiences. Beyond the law of supply and demand in the market, brands play an increasingly important role in our daily lives, determining who we are, how, and our lifestyle to define our quality of life. 

Humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow developed the hierarchy of needs theory in 1943, which includes physiological needs, safety, belonging and affection, esteem, and self-actualization. Branding activities work when the target consumers have exceeded the limits of physiological needs. People living far below the welfare limit are more motivated to meet their physiological needs, so their preferences are more of a commodity than a brand.