2) Branding, logos, cutesy characters, etc. 3) Trying to hack my brain with dirty tricks, lying-with-technical-truth, pseudo-enthusiastic actors, psychology gr

2) Branding, logos, cutesy characters, etc. 3) Trying to hack my brain with dirty tricks, lying-with-technical-truth, pseudo-enthusiastic actors, psychology grads thinking they are clever. Worse if they actually are being clever. Branding and logos help you recognise something. If you are going down the road and like the look of a car, the logo lets you know what it is. You know something is disney if you see Mickey's ears or the castle. Same with slews of other things. Not everything that has a logo is something that is advertised to you specifically. Alternatively, they help you figure out if the product is real or fake. Government seals, for instance, help with this. Overall, they let you know something about a product/company (in general) without spending as much thought to do so. But tricking the brain is more... On the low end, your example of giving "morals" to car companies or specific cars. But consider, for an instant, that toilet paper used to advertise, "Contains no splinters!". This was technically true, but the competitors did not produce splintered paper either. A current example is a vitamin commercial telling folks, "might help reduce medical condition!" when there is no science behind it.